Alan’s Kiloblog

Had to look and look to ask why this man was so familiar. He’s from Ann Arbor! The photographer has a very nice photoset of Ann Arbor places.

Told the story of life in the last 10th of the 20th century in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as it was, for me, Alan Gutierrez, and told it twice, in one day. That was today.

I told it once to someone who knows me as a young urban professional, then later to see if it could be a funny story, or at least not quite so depressing, to a dear heart, a special person.

In that halcyon decade, the venture capitalists had so infused Silicon Valley with cash that there was free money with no takers. I’m sorry we’re full. The VCs would walk the streets of Freemont with slim jims and 100 dollar bills, wedging them into the cracks of the sidewalks, in hopes that they might grow a money tree.

A business model is a business model, by gum, and sure as shooting, it’s better to lose the money than to give the money back.

That’s where Ann Arbor comes in. When every last crevase off 101 was funded, they went looking beyond the Valley, to places as far off as Michigan.

In this heyday, I drifted from one crack pot company to the next. Although I did not know it then, I was making money hand over fist. Furthermore, I’d general find myself in a position where I was working too hard to to shop. The ludicrous toys obtained through Amazon would sit in unopened cardbord boxes next to my desk.

In that time I learned quite a bit about software.

I’d eat ice cream in the dead of winter. It was prozac in a cone. Weekends were dreaded, since I’d be the only one at the office. I’d have the most stunning depressions, usually in parking lots, it would hit me in a wave. I’d boggle at how fast it set in, and I’d boggle at how accusomted I’d become. They would have been leathal, if not for the ice cream.

Stucchi’s, on State Street.

I was not a team player, but I was rarely in a position to learn from team members. This wasn’t the Valley. It was Ann Arbor.

There were cracker jack software developers about, but they were not keeping my company.

Why was that? Because, I steered clear of competence. My career was based on a simple premise.

Don’t ask. Don’t tell.

No more contract programming, because I won’t have time to do everything that I’m doing in the community. I’m in a good mood today because people are getting back into the elections, Mardi Gras has passed, and civic activity is more information oriented. The Mac continues to be very, very broken, but my information is trickling over to my server and my elderly PC laptop.

It didn’t occur to me how upsetting it was to have the Mac crash. Now it’s pretty clear that I’ve sought emotional stability in that desktop. It’s the one thing that came from Ann Arbor that perpetuated the order of Ann Arbor.

Do I miss Ann Arbor? Yikes!

Well, I’ve been melting down, and good. You might have noticed.

I’m not done with programming, I simply have to take a little break.

This evening in the midst of blather, the woman interrupts me and asks, in the most plaintiff tone, “Alan, what’s with you and school? I don’t get it. Why didn’t you finish?”

“Oh, you liked that bit? Was I being clever?”, I ask.

“Was it not challenging enough? Where you ADHD?”, she asks.

“No, just lazy and impertinent,” I say.

“Where did you learn all this stuff?” She’s big on questions.

“The Economist”, I offer.

The answer does not satisfy. Let me rethink. What follows is my best guess.

Gift of gab on the one hand, the gift of compassion on the other. I learn from relationships.

Heaven knows I’m woefully under-read.

Which is another way in which Ann Arbor and New Orleans are again, polar opposites. Ann Arbor puts its faith in the written word. New Orleans puts it’s faith in word of mouth.

Stuff from a handful of 3 x 5 cards that followed me from Ann Arbor.

Web 2.0 charting service, for embedding charts in blog entries, web applications. The notion that most people do not want to create content, they want to communicate, to that end a blog entry is an open letter. The difference between setting boundries and using displacement. The lunches I attended in Ann Arbor were always more interesting when we were not talking business. Mirantz recorder with flash drive and powered mic versus Mini-Disc. The difference between a salon and a court. Subversion performance on my OS X Powerbook G4. The business opportunities in rebuilding New Orleans, immediate needs versus grand visions. Putting a face on IT in the ex-urban setting, creating an analog parallel to your online community, augmenting your entertainment or service business with a social networking function. Open documents, especially business plans, for open source businesses. Personal talking points, template messages. Contact management as promise management, promises as currency. Be your own Ritalin. A mortal fear of an unmade man. Five key things.

In Ann Arbor, my life was a non-life, a waking death, empty.

Interactions with people in the city were dry and caustic. As I’ve said, In New Orleans people exchange pleasantries. In Ann Arbor, people exchange slights.

There were occasional bouts of mind bending despression, that I took in stride, like a headache. Utter despair, but nothing to take seriously. It’s all chemical.

Lithium perhaps? No. That’s putting the cart before the horse. Ben & Jerry’s and a squishy good film, ah, Netflix, to put my mind in another place. There was no way I was going to allow my life to become clinicial.
Why am I giving voice to this dispair now? I have no intention of burning bridges. There are great many people in Ann Arbor that are dear to me.

When I returned to Ann Arbor. I had a strong sense of what didn’t work for me there. Interactions did not go as expected. The failings were quite obvious.

Now it’s quite the opposite. Interactions are unexpectedly rewarding. I’m not sure what goes right, but it’s not in my nature to question a good things.

If you don’t have anything good to blog, do not blog anything.
The idea of Living the Long Tail didn’t apply in Ann Arbor. The Alan on offer in Ann Arbor was circumstantial. Nothing I wanted to reinforce. Most of my time was spent in USENET and listservs, focused on expanding my understanding of Java and XML. Stictly digital.