Katinger.com

As many of you know by now I'll be starting a new job at the Taunton Press in Newtown, CT on Monday, November 1. My last day at Daymon Worldwide was October 22nd. I've been hanging around and doing some freelance work during my week off. Allison and I also made a trip up to Kent Falls.

If I had stuck around Daymon until November 18th I would have made the two year mark there. When I started out at Daymon I was hoping that I would be there for the next five years or so, but even the best laid plans sometimes go awry. I'll be heading to Taunton with fond memories of my co-workers in the Daymon IS Department, but with a lot of hope and excitement for the future.

Taunton seems ripe with opportunity for a person with my skill sets and there I'll get to focus on what I love, public facing web sites and e-commerce. The job at Daymon had changed while I was there and I guess I'm not quite as flexible as I thought I was. I'm not terribly interested in being an inside sales person or managing the selection of an order management system, or a digital asset management system, etc. Corporate I.T. isn't for me. I want to work on the web and cultivate customer relationships that directly effect the bottom line. I want to help an organization make money online. The ultimate challenge! I don't want to be seen on the balance sheet as "corporate overhead."

I'll deeply miss my manager at Daymon. This was the second company at which we worked together. He brought me into the place with the same high hopes that I had. I get the feeling that we'll work together again in yet another life. He gave me quite a send-off on my last day. Even I, the office rage-cage, was kind of touched by the gesture.

This will be not only a change of jobs, but also a geographical change for us. Come mid-December, once our lease is up in this dump, we'll be moving north closer to Newtown. We CAN'T WAIT to get the hell out of here. If you keep up with this goofy little web site you'll know we absolutely adore our neighbors...NOT! Norwalk isn't the worst place in the world, but it ain't great either. We are looking forward to moving north...more trees...lower prices. Can't beat that.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes. You Daymon people drop me a note now and then.

Still need help choosing the right presidential candidate for you? Tuesday is coming. Make a choice already. Ok, here's some help: MSNBC has been nice enough to provide you with a tool that tests your views and opinions and then tells you which candidate is most inline with your views. Make a choice...

MSNBC.com: WHERE DO THEY STAND?

I've just taken a new job (more on that later) in which it looks like web analytics will play a larger role than it has in any of my previous positions. Perhaps that's why I found this list so interesting...

Today's Top 10 Web Analytics Problems

1. So Many Tools, So Little Time
2. Dependence on It to Get Things Done
3. Expectations of Accuracy
4. Went Shopping for Answers, but Only Got Data
5. Got Tools and Lots of Reports, but No Analysts
6. No Benchmarks
7. Normalizing Metrics Across Design Changes
8. Data Integration
9. Putting Web Analytics Data to Use
10. TCO Surprises

Back in the early e-Media days there were many interns floating around...of which I was one. I was in college and had a full time job pretty much locked at e-Media upon graduation. However there were a few interns there who were much younger - high school kids. One of them was a kid from New Canaan named David Wilson.

When I was working at e-Media, especially in the early days, I was full of fire and didn't have time for anyone who wasn't "getting it done." If you weren't on the list of "cool kids" I probably didn't know you. Which makes it all the more surprising that I recall David so well. His time there was fairly short. He was quiet and unassuming, but had wit and smarts...which made me like him. He was a little blonde kid from town who was a Mac Geek in training. He loved his computer and, as I recall, looked up to our CTO quite a bit. I don't remember any particular conversation with him so much as I recall his essence. I believe he was a bit of a wise ass to me once or twice and I liked that a lot. I was shocked to hear from e-Media's founder that David had killed himself on September 23rd.

It makes me mad that, though we were by no means "buddies" - just acquaintances - I didn't keep in touch with him after his internship at e-Media was over. It makes me incredibly angry that such a sweet and intelligent kid couldn't find someone or something that could keep him off the edge...

It makes me feel fortunate that I have.

HamcoNews.com: RPI student kills himself in Wells (via Kevin)

I try quite hard to stay away from political conversation with just about everyone except a chosen few. It's not that I don't have opinions...I just don't want to listen to other people's crap. However, John Stewart's appearance Friday on CNN's Crossfire "debate" show is just too damn good to pass up.

And if you really listen to the interview and what Stewart is saying, he isn't even being partisan (though he is obviously a leftist Kerry vote). What he's really striking out at is the media in general, both left and right.

MTV (of all places) sums it up pretty well...

In an era when the media is increasingly fragmented and viewers can surround themselves with programming that falls right in line with their own views, be they on the right or the left, Stewart's blast seemed especially on point. It seems fitting that the tirade came on a day when much of the media attention focused on the presidential race was directed at the mention of Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter during the last presidential debate, as opposed to the issues addressed at that debate.

Politics have gotten so far away from "issues" that a normal shmuck like me can't make heads or tails of what the real talking points are. I now depend on people like Ed to explain this stuff to me...but then I'm just repeating his opinions...and then what kind of American am I?

I absolutely love John Stewart for one reason and one reason only: he makes me laugh. He makes me laugh really hard just about every night he's on TV. But beyond that, he seems pretty good at pointing out the idiocy of the current political process from BOTH the left and the right. Go John!

• Watch the interview
• Read the transcript of the interview

(Thanks Farwell)

My friend Bill from Rochester forwarded me an essay by his friend Steve Roberts. It pretty much sums up my own opinions on politics as of late. Bill said he didn't think Steve would mind if I posted it on the site, so I figured I would share it with you...

It Breaks My Heart To Vote
By Steve Roberts

My son Peter became a bank robber so that he wouldn't die from his addiction to crack. Robbing a bank was the only way he knew to get himself off the street and off the pipe. His options, as he saw them, were jail or death.

Such is the power of despair.

I hired a lawyer for him. Fortunately, Peter was a first-time offender who had carried no weapon and didn't threaten anyone. Prosecutors see guys like him all the time: Technically a criminal; in reality, a drug addict. The lawyer negotiated a deal where, instead of hard time, Peter was sentenced to a six-month drug rehab "boot camp." He completed the "boot camp" and was paroled. Within a few weeks he started using again, and to support his habit robbed a couple more banks.

Such is the power of addiction.

This time I hired no lawyer. Being a recovering alcoholic myself, I knew that things often have to get worse before there is even a chance they'll get better. Few choices have been more painful than surrendering the desire to intervene on behalf of my child. All I can do is be present and loving as Peter makes his own choice to live or die. And the only way I can really be present and loving is to forgive myself for times when my addictions have killed my life.

What does this have to do with voting?

I feel the same way about my nation as I feel about my son. It is a pain that is especially acute when it comes to electing a president. As George Carlin says, we're a great country, but a strange culture. It breaks my heart to vote. Part of me feels that no matter who I vote for, I am basically enabling our cultural addiction to blame, intolerance and denial. I feel that, to a far greater degree than is useful, the left and right of American politics are two sides of the same coin called bigot. To me, a bigot is someone who makes no room for another.

As a result, we give birth to presidential candidates whose primary quality is not the ability to bring forth the inherent greatness of America's diversity, but rather is someone whose overriding attribute is pandering to our addictions. Our addiction to see the world simplistically. Our addiction to blame others for our pain. Our addiction to deny the connectedness of everyone on the planet. Our addiction to the belief that it is possible to create a "safe" world without growing our capacity to love. To name just a few.

How could it be otherwise? Our presidents are merely reflections of ourselves.

I pray that my son reaches a place of such utter despair that he says, "I will do anything never to be here again." I just hope that, should he say it, it isn't with his dying breath. Likewise, I pray that we as a culture will awaken ever more fully to the harm caused by our addictions - and do so before freedom and equality are considered luxuries.

It breaks my heart that my vote will be construed as support for a particular candidate or ideology.

When Bruce Springsteen kicked off the Vote for Change tour, he said, "We're here tonight to fight for a government that is open, rational, forward-looking and humane, and we're going to rock the joint while doing so." That's what I'd like my vote to stand for - including the rock the joint part but unlike Mr. Springsteen, I don't feel that, as a culture, we create presidential candidates who can actually be the agent of such inspired common sense.

I will vote in this election for what may seem a very strange reason. The pain of it will remind me that making America healthier is only incidentally about who is president, and absolutely about who am I. As Gandhi says, we must be the change we wish to bring about in others. Only by forgiving myself for the ways in which my own addictions have killed my life can I truly serve my nation by being present and loving regardless of the insane choices we all contribute to.

Steve Roberts lives in Johnson, VT. He is a ghostwriter of memoirs, as well as a strategist and mentor of leaders, and can be found on the Web at CoolMindWarmHeart.com

So the Rutan team won the XPrize on Monday and I continue to be fascinated with it. After scouring the net for as many photos as I could find I came across one that struck a chord with me. The photo is the one on the top left where one of the "astronaut" pilots of SpaceShipOne, Brian Binnie, is riding SSO back after one of the successful flights. I can't help but think that this move was inspired by the movie "The Right Stuff." There is a scene in the movie where Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) is standing on the top of the Bell X1 as it is towed back to the hangar after breaking the sound barrier. I'm not sure if that really happened or if it was just Hollywood, but kudos to Binnie for understanding just how historic his tow back to the hangar with SpaceShipOne was. My generation has it's own Yeager!

Something incredibly amazing is going on in the world of space exploration that you should know about; we put a person into orbit! Sounds like something that we did backing the 1960's right? Why get so excited? Because this person was put into orbit in an aircraft built with private money and absolutely no government involvement. That's right; it is now possible for regular companies to build space craft.

Legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan (who designed Voyager that flew around the world on one tank of gas back in 1986) led a team that designed and built the space ship and its "mother ship" to compete for the X Prize. This competition awarded $10 million to the first people to build a private space craft. I think it's safe to say that this mission was not about winning the $10 million for any of the participants involved. They no doubt spent quite a bit more that $10 million on building the craft alone. This is about the next level of space exploration.

Do you realize that this means? Visionary lunatic millionaires like Richard Branson do! Industry no longer needs to wait for government in order to push the boundaries of space. I will vacation on the moon in this lifetime.

The comments in this video probably sum it up better than I can.

Thought you should know.

It is official. October 1, 2005 will be the day Allison and I get married. We will be doing it at a gorgeous place in Port Jefferson, Long Island called Lombardi's. The view is amazing...the food is amazing. I guess it's time I put together an official wedding page with all the details. In the mean time...save the date!