I had a couple speaking engagements in San Jose at KMWorld last week that conflicted with Halloween; so, rather than missing Ashby’s first Halloween, Tara and Ashby headed out to San Jose with me. It was great to have them there. We spent the entire week at my sister’s house, Julie, in Atherton. It would be wonderful if Tara and I could live the rest of our lives without ever being separate for an entire day. Tara read somewhere this is how Paul and Linda McCartney lived. That would be fantastic. Anyhow, it was great for Ashby to see her cousins again: Skylar and Owen. We were out there in June for at least a few days; so, it wasn’t their first time together, but now that Ashby is older she was able to really engage them.

Ashby really digs traveling. She is so into it, it’s a riot. She just has the time of her life at the airport, on the plane, strolling about in public from place to place. I think she thinks she is the queen of the parade or something. She just loves it! This girl loves to be on the go. This was the third time she has flown since being born. The first time we flew to North Carolina so I could speak at UNC, then, as I said, we were in California last June (Tom Tran’s wedding), and now this Halloween trip. She’ll likely fly again this year to San Diego. More on that later.

Tara and Ashby spent all day at Julie and Paul’s while I went into San Jose to work from the hotel was holed up at: Hotel Montgomery, a snazzy and affordable hotel just a couple blocks from the McEnery Convention Center where KMWorld was being held. For some bizarre reason my sister’s place doesn’t have WiFi with broadband. I have no idea what’s up with that considering Julie is a Publisher for a major technology media company. It’s always strange going back to the valley. It definitely feels like home. As soon as I step off the plane the smell hits me and I immediately know I’m back to the homeland. Maybe that’s my kind of pollution. I don’t know. There is something comforting about the urban sprawl, the rolling foothills, and good Asian food on every corner. I guess you can go home.

Tara and I got out for sushi twice the week we were there. Living in Minnesota we don’t get many chances to get decent food…I mean Asian food. In case you didn’t know: Swedes, Norwegians, and Irish don’t have the most diverse palletes. We went to Bonsai in Redwood City off El Camino on Monday while Julie and Paul monitored Ashby while she slept, which had totally shitty service and ‘ok’ food. Then later in the week we took Ashby to some sushi place in Palo Alto that, oddly enough, Tara had been to once previously a couple years ago with her mother. Odd coincidence. This place was pretty good. Ashby ate rice for the first time, she loved it, and, as usual, had a gay ol’ time with us. She really gets a thrill about being on the go.

I spoke on Tuesday about wikis being the future of Knowledge Management and then on Wednesday I spoke about business/enterprise wikis and features and attributes to consider when selecting a wiki. I wrote briefly about this at my OpenGarden.org blog, which reminds me: I need to publish my PPTs up there. In general, I’m sorry to say, I think KMWorld is lame. Mainly because the organizers were just so damn disorganized. Just to give you some idea: it took me 15-20 minutes, 5people and three trips to figure out that I needed another ribbon on my badge to get me into the exhibition hall. Also, they misplaced Joel Waterman (Program Director, Enterprise Search Solutions, IBM) and I in the ‘collaboration’ track and totally boffed the description for our presentation.

I was stunned to see TheBrain there. Apparently they’ve been at KMWorld every year since 2000. It’s weird because I remember this software application like 6 or 7 years ago. It’s a mind map based personal information manager. I remember when I first saw it I was so impressed by the interface. Strangely the interface hasn’t changed since I first saw it–six years ago. It looks old. It’s kind of like when you see furniture from the 1980’s…not pretty. Not exactly a classic. I look at some of these bubbly Web 2.0 interfaces and I just know it’s going to be the same thing a few years from now. We’re going to look back at them and wonder what the hell was everyone was smoking. Just because we can make everything clickable, draggable, with rounded edges and primary colors doesn’t me should.

Then there was Halloween. Wwwwweeeeeeee!! This was so much fun! I hauled ass back to Julie’s house after my presentation on Wednesday just in time to catch everyone geared up and ready to go trick-or-treating. Ashby was, as you can see, dressed as a Lady Bug from hell. Ok, so I said she was from hell for creep factor. It didn’t work well. I grabbed the only costume I had at my disposal in 5 minutes and we headed out. It was awesome! Ashby was totally into it. We went a couple miles away from Julie and Paul’s place and met up with a mob of children, and their parents, that Julie and Paul know. Tara and I made it out to about a dozen houses before heading home early to get Ashby to bed.

On Thursday, Paul and I went to a San Jose Sharks game. I had never been to a hockey game. It was a blast! Paul got us some killer seats: eighth row center. Other than Mark, the very big and clearly mentally impaired dude in the seat next to who kept crowding me and periodically dropping peanuts into my beer it was great. Hockey is loads of fun live. Sharks lost 1-2 to the Rangers.

Friday, we convened the: "Phase 2 of Establish Global Dominance" meeting with several of the MindTouch core team. MUHAHAHAHA!!! The next 6 months are going to be very exciting.

Finally, on Saturday we had brunch in Las Altos (Las Altos Cafe–good) with Josh Branscomb. An old buddy of mine that I graduated from UNC with. We did our senior project together. He’s pretty cool, for a Republican. Josh actually helped forge MindTouch waaaaaay back when it was still just an idea, before there were even other Wiki companies out there. In fact, he really was a founder. Instead of continuing with MindTouch he decided to go to Stanford Law School to get his law-monkey certification. He’s doing great though. He spent last Summer in D.C. and he’ll be working with Wilson and Sonsini this summer. In case you didn’t know, this is probably the most well respected technology focused law firm in the country. They represent Google, Yahoo, and perhaps the most impressive client: MindTouch!

• KMWorld Photos
• San Jose Sharks Game
• Global Dominance Meeting
• Halloween Photos

Given the opportunity to spend $2 Billion a week, what would you spend it on? Personally, I would spend it on research and education. Imagine…an additional $2 Billion a week. Just think about what an incredible difference this would make to mankind. Well, our government has instead chosen to spend $2 Billion every week on waging war in Iraq (an average since beginning of war). What does this buy us? Well, this buys us 7,000 dead Iraqis a week (on average based on Lancet, a British Medical Journal ). This also buys us 164 American casualties a week with 22 Americans dead a week (on average–based on official numbers, estimated is higher). This also buys us new generations of terrorists, destabilization in the middle east, an emboldened Korea, Iran and Syria, a more competitive China, and global disdain for our country.

It’s important to point out this is $2,000,000,000 is money we do not have. We’re borrowing this money from, mostly, China. We’re funding the world’s next super-power on the backs of our sons and daughters. Remarkable.

To all my CS buddies out there who periodically read my personal blog I want to make sure you check out the following program I’m kicking off over at OpenGarden.org. See below:

MindTouch DekiWiki Germinate v.1.0

MindTouch wants you!

We want to enlist the help of the Gardeners (you) in steering the development of DekiWiki.

What's in it for you?

Aside from gratitude and a smug piece of mind knowing that you're making a great project even better, the Gardener (submitter) whose feature is selected will receive a Video iPod ^tm and as much fame as OpenGarden.org can provide.

We're excited about reviewing your ideas! This is a unique opportunity for you to impact a software application that is currently powering almost 40,000 sites (as of October 24, 2006).

Details

For more information and to provide your submissions visit here.

Tara, Ashby, and I headed north to the in-laws early Saturday morning to spend some time with Tommy, my father-in-law, for his 62nd birthday. As it turned out the weekend coincided with the third annual Area 61 UFO Convention. Two years ago Tara and I stumbled upon this conference. It's like entering an alternate dimension. The event is held at Lakeview Castle, which is a bar/restaurant on the North shore of Lake Superior. The place is too big for it’s location and it bears a strong resemblance to a run down quasi-castle. The first time we stumbled upon the Area 61 Convention we were diving into about a hundred and fifty hipsters, folks with antennae, wannabe Men In Black, and a modern dance troupe that danced a diddy while William S. Burroughs performed spoken voice over a techno beat. Mix in some lumberjacks and you've got a pretty good idea what this place and event is like. Pretty trippy.

After getting to the in-laws’ house on Saturday morning, Brenda (mother-in-law) informed us Area 61 was going on. Suddenly our celebration of Tommy’s birthday morphed into Tara and I getting some, much needed, time out alone. (Happy Birthday Tommy, thanks) We got to Lakeview a little after 9 PM. This being the event's third it had grown considerably. This was the first time I’ve ever known Lakeview to charge a cover. The Black Labels were playing and they are worth a lot more than the $5 cover; so, I didn't mind. A band named Crew Jones took stage a little after we got there. They had a good sound (reminiscent of Soul Coughing), but their sound setup was total crap. A monkey must have been working their sound board.

Tara and I chatted with the percussion/trombone player from The Black Labels at the bar for a bit while Crew Jones playes. He's a good guy. If you haven’t been to a Black Labels show you’re missing out. They’re the best band I’ve heard in MN that's from MN since the Surahoolies back in the mid-90s. I wonder: whatever happened to the Surahoolies? Anyway, The Black Labels are great They are dance hall, but regularly riff into surfer rock. Duluth has a peculiarly active music scene.

Anyway, Area 61 was definitely the highlight of the weekend. Otherwise my time has been devoted to preparing for KMWorld, where I’ll be speaking in just over a week and completing a proposal.

• Photo set

I often hear people throwing around the word: “Fascism.” The Bush administration has been calling ‘terrorists’ Islamo-Fascisist. Some Liberals claim the Bush Administration is a Fascist government. This got me to thinking: What is Fascism? Fascism is a social and political ideology with the primary guiding principle that the state or nation is the highest priority, rather than personal or individual freedoms. Historically this has taken the form of extreme anti-communistic and anti-liberal. I found the following definition, which I like because it also provides the etymology of the word:

Fascism
The name comes from the Latin fasces – a bundle of rods with a projecting axe, which was the symbol of authority in ancient Rome. The term was applied by Mussolini to his movement after his rise to power in 1922. The Fascists were viciously anti-Communist and anti-liberal and, once in power, relied on an authoritarian state apparatus. They also used emotive slogans and old prejudices (for example, against the Jews) to bolster the leader’s strongman appeal. Fascism had a direct influence on Hitler’s Nazism.

Provided the term liberal, above, I’m forced to ask: In this context what is meant by liberal? The same site provides this definition:

Liberalism
A term that gained significance in the 19th century, when it meant the limiting of government power and the increase of social reform. In the 20th century, capitalist democracies occasionally described themselves as ‘liberal’ to indicate that they didn’t attempt to control thought and action to the same extent as Communist regimes.

Historically Liberal means a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties. Almost every definition defines a Liberal as someone who is concerned with the protection of civil liberties. I think this is important to point out. By this definition I consider myself Liberal. I believe government should, mostly, stay out of business and let the markets manage themseleves (within common sense) and, by God, businesses should stay the hell out government. Also, religion and government do not mix. In general, I’m fiscally conservative and consider myself to be Libertarian and very big on education. I bring this up because as a Libertarian I find Fascism terribly frightening.

Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, published an article on fascism (“Fascism Anyone?,” Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20) This was the summary of a study he conducted on the fascist regimes of Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Suharto, and Pinochet. Dr. Britt posits each of these regimes all shared 14 charateristics, which he defines as the “identifying characteristics of fascism.” The following is an except taken from Free Inquiry in accordance with the magazine’s policy.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military

Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

6. Controlled Mass Media

Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Is it possible to read this without concluding that we, in the United States, are living in a regime that has been for the last six years sliding toward fascism?

What happened to SunNimbus? Wellllllll…I’ve sat on this domain: http://www.nblogn.com for at least a couple years now and SunNimbus is a bit of a pain in the ass because whenever I tell someone: S-U-N-N-I-M-B-U-S they’re always confused. Also, typing it sunnimbus.com for email is a bit of a pain. In short, nblogn is just hella cool, a lot easier to remember, and easier to speak to someone. That’s the story.

Having only lived in the Twin Cities for just over two years now I had heard of an ethnic market in South Minneapolis on more than a few occaisions, but we hadn’t visited it until today. The Midtown Global Market [d] is an internationally-themed public market featuring fresh and prepared foods, ethnic restaurants, and vendors of arts and crafts from around the world. Ron and J.J. mentioned the market a week or so ago and Tara and I figured we should check it out. Ashby loves being out and about. She is really into people watching. We didn’t make it to the market until 3:30 PM today (Sunday); so, it was pretty slow, but it was really fun. We had some food at Safari, which was some type of African/Island fusion that was just wonderful! We got some proscuitto and a couple types of salamis (still not the same as being in Italy). Also, I had a great cup of coffee at Mapps Tea and Coffee, which was truly one of the best cups of Joe I have had in some time. Finally, some Latina took to the center stage in the market and provided us with some lovely music and enterntainment that Ashby danced to as she watched this darling chica with some maracas. I’d like to know the history of the building. It looks like an old grain exchange or something. I didn’t see any historical plaque on it though. I hear there are several other ethnic markets in the Midtown neighborhood.

• Wikipedia:Midtown
• Midtown Global Market
• Mercado Central
• Midtown Public Market

This week I attended the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, CA. I’ve already provided a few posts on my blog at OpenGarden.org: Intro, 900 lb Gorilla, Big Announcement, and Parade. What did I get out of it? Well, I think Wufoo is super cool and 3Tera is bad ass. Other than that…well, read my posts.

The event was held in the St. Regis hotel, which is super nice. It’s adjacent to the SFMOMA and the art in the hotel is, as you might suspect, modern and quite nice. After the festivities of the first day Pete and I retired to the hotel bar to mingle with the conference attendees. I was speaking with some fellow who asked me if I am a fan of The Pogues [w]. YES! I’m a big fan! I hadn’t seen them since Joe Strummer did the last tour with them. By the way, who would have ever thought MacGowan would outlive Strummer? Not me. After hearing my interest in the band, the fellow (Pat I think his name was) merrily handed me over the extra ticket he had to the concert that night at The Fillmore. The freakin’ Pogues at The freakin’ Fillmore! How could I pass that up? Apparently Pat (the fellow) had been the night before, had tickets for all three nights, and couldn’t find someone to use the extra ticket he had for that night. I was so damn exhausted, but I knew I would be kicking myself for years if I didn’t go. I got there about 8:00 PM and the crowd broke up at 11:15 PM or so. In general, I was rather displeased with how mellow the audience was. I’ve seen The Pogues do EIGHT encores and the crowd only stuck around long enough to get two out of them. The pit was pretty sedate too. Not like the last time I saw them with Strummer. I think part of this was MacGowan’s fault b/c he simply isn’t too energetic these days. However, I heard many concert-goers commenting on how wild the pit was. Wild? Bah! That was super mellow. MacGowan looks alright though having put on some weight (maybe he’s off the white horse). Anyhow, I had a blast.Thanks Pat (I hope that’s your name).

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the opening band Murder by Death, which I only caught about thirty minutes of, was really great. Too bad the audience was pretty lame for them because these guys (and gal) were seriously heavy (and they had a Cello).

The family and I travelled north this weekend to spend a couple nights on Madeline Island. It happened to coincide with Bayfield’s Applefest, which was a fortuitous circumstance as we had never been, but I have heard tons about it. Bayfield is a pituresque town on the south shore of Lake Superior, which seems to be an eclectic mix of ex-hippies and farmers. As you’ll see from the photo’s the Fall colors were in full bloom.

The cabin we stayed at on Madeline Island was allegedly “waterfront,” which apparently means lake superior is about 75 yards away through some trees and across the road (photo to the right). However, the beach was the best damn beach I’ve ever seen on Lake Superior. Quite stunning. I was told the beach in the state park on the Island is the significantly better than any other place on the Island, but this was such a short visit we didn’t get a chance to see it up close. From a distance it looked to be a very deep beach, similar to what you would expect to see from an Ocean beach and not a Lake beach.

Ashby turned 9 months old on this trip and had some other milestones. It was the first time she was ever on a boat. She had previously stayed in a cabin and has been to Wisonsin before. To date she has been to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, and California. She has already flown twice by now. She will be flying again when we go to California at the end of October again. KMWorld is in San Jose and rather than missing Ashby’s first Halloween we’re going to spend Halloween with Julie (my sister) and the Ekstroms.

As we walked around Bayfield on Saturday, which was packed with people, I stumbled across this fellow wearing a MindTouch Tshirt!! Ok, so it’s really my father in law. Although, I was recently related a story by a friend of mine in which he and his wife were in the Badlands camping when someone recognized the MindTouch shirt his wife was wearing and excitedly proclaimed: “hey I know those guys!” Evidently our brand has developed some equity as I have heard similar stories to this more than a few times. The setting is usually an urban one though.

There was this band playing music at Bayfield that got my attention when they announced they were from North Carolina. I’m unclear as to what their band name was, but they were quite good. I’m not sure if they were called “Bus”, “Big Pretty” or “Red Rockets.” Anyway, they had a suuuper unique sound. It was like ska fused with hip-hop with a tinge of folk/rock, and I’m certain I even heard a blue grass influence in a couple songs. Sounds weird, but it worked. At any rate, it turns out the fellow on the Cello (to the right) graduated two years earlier than me from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Computer Science program. Apparently after a stint at IBM he decided to pursue music full-time. We even had mutual friends, he knew Matt McCallus and John Crouch (Matt is at Red Storm still, I think, and John I believe is a full-time musician now). Crazy.

In general, it was a good mini-mini-vacation. If you do make it to Madeline Island definitely stop by the “Island Oasis” bar on a weekend night after 9pm. It’s a trippy local hang-out that is open only in the Summer and Fall (I’m told). Kind of hard to describe, but certainly worth stopping at.

I recently did a little experiment over at Dandelife.com to see if this could replace my personal blogging space. I think this is a really cool service. It’s been a long while since I did any real blogging as is evident by perusing the archives here at SunNimbus. I thought Dandelife may reignite my interest in personal blogging. It did, but I’ve now decided to stop blogging at Dandelife. Why? Well, I want to own my data (plus they’re not open source). Sure, I really like Dandelife’s cool timeline view and how easy it is to add my Flickr photos, but what happens to all my content? Who owns it? I think it would be great for my daughter, Ashby (photo here at Coon Rapids Dam), to be able to read my crap ten years from now. However, where is Dandelife going to be 2 years from now? Where will all these other hosted services be? Who Knows!! As an employee of a ~”Web2.0″ company that is constantly evangelising data custody maybe I’ve drunk my own Kool-Aid. Or, have I? There are ample stories of hosted companies, like Flickr, blocking competitors from using their API to allow ‘we the users’ to pull our content out and /or expose it elsewhere. Who owns my content…If it’s not on my server? So, why am I using Flickr still…I don’t know…I still have high res copies of all my photos. Is there a better photo sharing service out there? Anyhow, I’m going to move all my posts from Dandelife to SunNimbus and abandon that space. I want data custody! Nonetheless, I think Dandelife’s timeline view is cool and overall I think they have a slick interface; moreover, I think their emphasis on providing an autobiography is a really good idea, perhaps more so now that I have a progenitor. After all, who else would really give a damn?