Tag: tony is a dork

10 years old…and I am still here…

10 Year AnniversaryPeople still ask about “Hold No Virtue.” I try to explain it as this. Being virtuous isn’t something to be aspired to or cherished, indicating a material value at some level and thus will be withheld in lieu of fear of loss. Virtue doesn’t belong to the virtuous, rather vice versa…the virtuous are just being good. To hold on high someone that is good is part of the mistake, as I think it should be the baseline for how we interact with one another. I simply think that we have it within ourselves to be better without handing out prizes for it.

Now…as for the “Tonytown” part…well I am happy to say that wasnt actually my idea…

…and then Rob says with that crazy grin,
“HAHA…She’s about to get a free ride on the skinboat to Tonytown!”

It’s funny considering how this all started. I was just starting to tinker around with hosting and just starting to get my sea legs back on the unix of things, and wanted to convert what journal entries I had left to a digital format for later reference. I’d been tinkering with domain usage and an old friend Rob had a saying about me referencing the term “Tonytown” I knew that would be the perfect name for this. The really funny part is that I had assumed I was using the c2/cafelog right (which I wasn’t), and was making all those journal entries public instead of keeping the journal entries private.

…you see there are things you just cant live down, or laugh at. But that is it, the origin of how this all started. I went from accidentally posting all my entries and memories…from Dancing with Death and mentioning (and getting called out on) high school crushes, and even accidentally leaving a homemade rss aggregator running so well that I was getting more traffic from other bloggers articles than they were getting on their own posts.

But it’s always been fun. It’s always been an enabler for me to speak my mind on the subjects that even some of my close friends aren’t comfortable discussing. It’s enabled me to grow what was a hobby into a skill, and even more into expertise. At one point I even labelled myself a giant dork for having such a hobby. 10 years of WordPress (in all its incarnations), 10 years of expression. This little piece of internet real estate was my true enabler. It let me groom and cultivate the world…all colored lovingly in my rarely humble opinion.

10 years…and I own a successful IT company rather than worry about the 9-5 grind.
10 years…and now I’ve met all the wonderful bloggers, writers, and people that inspired me.
10 years…and now I own my own hosting company…not just one little blog.

…and this was very likely the first little step.

Cheers interwebs! Happy 10 Years of putting up with my nonsense!

-Tony




Tony’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Hi guys, I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to get called out for the ice bucket challenge, but it happened yesterday! An old friend (Joel) called me out. Lou Gehrig’s disease, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is is a progressive degenerative nerve disease that wreaks havoc on those who suffer from it. ALS is something we can all do something about, even if it’s something as silly as dumping a bucket of ice water on our heads.

I will be calling out Aaron from @MOTORPHILIA, Michael from @Thinkmodo, and my good buddy Tyler.

Please donate and dump a bucket of ice on your head for good measure!

http://www.alsa.org/donate/

Thanks go out to Kevin and Ashton for helping cool me off with 5 gallons of ice water…




Schrödinger’s Cat jokes might not be funny anymore, or they might be…

schrodinger-catYaknow… Schrödinger’s Cat jokes used to be the type of thing us nerdy types would mention and joke about and see who among us made “the cut.” Now…it’s on memes and tshirts and such.

I mention this because it occurs to me that the demographic that was inclined to know this 20 years ago is in no way shape or form similar to the group of people familiar with the experiment today. Quite the opposite, and despite the fact that information and education are becoming more available exponentially every day, the average IQ globally has been falling, and those of us more inclined and/or dedicated to scholastic endeavors find ourselves surrounded by a demographic that can only be quantified by their ability to Google their data rather than experience it.

Why experiment when someone else has already made a video of it?

To me this is like saying why should I sing when there are so many other people that sing better? In my opinion it’s lazy thinking.

Don’t get me wrong, sensationalizing human intellect has given elevation to those of us that would have had to otherwise either be a successful politician, athlete, or entertainer. It’s given smart people the motivation and self-respect to continue rather than elect to conform or worse…act as if they hadn’t the intellect.

The fist time I saw a Schrödinger’s Cat tshirt I thought it was the most awesome thing since relativity…now, I see kids that don’t even know who Schrodinger was wearing the shirt because they saw it on the Big Bang Theory, and thus I am presented with the irony of the situation and the foundation of tonight’s ponderous issue…

It seems that at least on some level, it’s become more attractive to people to act like a nerd rather than to actually be one, and it makes my arse twitch.

Be better.

-Tony