Howard
When Tim Hall ‘tagged’ me, my initial, instinctive gut reaction was: God- what an infantile, puerile idea. There’s no way I am going to participate in that ‘meme’. The concept wasn’t new to me as I’d already seen Scoble and those Web 2.0 PR types participate in similar mindless activities which I just chose to ignore.
However, my reasons for objecting were slightly different from yours. Normally, I despise being told what to so and what to blog about. Similarly, whenever my various employers announced a ‘Dress down Friday’ which was gleefully received by my colleagues, I would purposefully don a suit and tie. After all, a uniform on a Friday is still a uniform.
Secondly, the very thought of having to identify eight further victims to be tagged also filled me with dread. Not because I worried about OraNA being swamped with an exponential explosion and prolonged burst of non-technical content but, because, I feared the unlucky recipients may possibly share my feelings.
Of course, they could all maintain a dignified silence and simply ignore my pleas to join the party but what if they also hated this Web 2.0 ‘meme’ but were too shy, polite and retiring to tell me what they really thought. I know a handful of ‘bloggers’ but have only met two in the flesh and (thankfully) slept with neither.
While I did discover some new blogs of interest, not necessarily because of the ‘8 things’, I must admit that I quickly tired of hearing about people’s job history, favourite cars, mental and physical disorders (mild or otherwise), alternative careers, wild death defying adventures and the fact they once killed a man with their bare hands in the Burmese jungle.
So why, I hear you ask, did I capitulate, run towards the cliff and conjure up a disposable blog entry titled ‘8 things’ ? Well, the truth is I thought it was a cheap post, I was short on inspiration and there was some elements I wanted to write about which don’t merit a full blog post but were better suited to a short bullet point.
I followed your analysis, comments and thoughts with interest (for the first couple of days at least). I continued to read your blog, I tracked your posts on c.d.o.s, I monitored your comments on other blogs. When I saw your detailed analysis, use of analogies and various lengthy responses and compared with it my paltry, throwaway one-liners, I felt like a troll.
I occasionally commented myself and you normally responded. Not, I suspect to get the last word but you genuinely care. A lot. I admired your passion and felt somehow inadequate that I had spontaneously chosen to respond to what some Oracle bloggers (unwisely IMHO) had termed a ‘chain letter’, ‘spam’ or a ‘game’.
I am genuinely sorry that you have decided to shut down your site as (as I have stated before) your blog, forums and articles represent an invaluable set of technical resources for anyone working with Oracle.
I am sorry if my trite comment on your blog that I ‘hadn’t signed up to your terms and conditions when I started my blog’ irritated you and may have, in some small way, contributed towards your decision.
However, just as it is your prerogative to close your site down, I have the same right to post about my travel nightmares, ‘47 things’, my thoughts on Newcastle’s new manager or Scoble’s laugh.
Particularly, as my blog is not (currently) aggregated by OraNA and hence will not contaminate or interrupt the stream of consciousness.
Mind you, never say never.
Andy