inquiry

An anonymous admirer pondered thusly:

did inquiry just admit to cheating on his wife?

Inquiry supposes it depends on one's definition of “cheating”.

Possible answers:

• yes (if mere platonic interaction constitutes “cheating”)
• no (if mere platonic interaction does not constitute “cheating”)

looks like i am with tmo now or at least i think i have outgrown read.write.as anyway as i am averaging on 15.000 views per article and almost 100.000 on my most popular time for a break at least whilst i consider pointing my domain at another platform

One certainly ought to do what makes them happiest.

Gosh, I haven't owned a domain in years.

I do recall once-upon-a-time thinking it was a first step toward online fame and/or riches.

But somewhere along the line I realized nothing I write is worth paying for – or certainly not often enough to be hearing the almighty ka-ching (cha-ching?).

To me it's more like there are those who rise to the level of writing for The New Yorker, and then there's everyone else. (Not exactly like that.. but, like I typed, “more like”.)

Writing pertaining to online-related technology seems mostly a waste of time, too, given the pace of change. But do note that I'm not referring to the documentation people who actually write the code produce, I'm talking about the gobs of articles on how to do this and/or that, which quickly become outdated (read: misleading).

Basically, where's that proverbial nickel for each time over the years I hoped learning about how to make a change in a Windows environment was going to be simply a matter of “googling it”, and reading either the first or second “hit”?

Instead, it's almost always a frustrating spanking machine traversal consisting of having to Ctrl-click on a dozen++ hits only to find most (if not all) refer to Windows versions other than what I'm interested in, many/most have at least one modal popup shooting annoying spitballs at my attention (especially, these days, the requirement to either accept site cookies, or (figuratively speaking) to read anonymous read.write.as posts..), many are indecipherable if not just plain incorrect, etc., etc.

So what is the online realm, really?

To me it seems something akin to an occasional lucidity blip accidentally belched from a seemingly boundless sea of hexadecimal entropy.

That's why I may occasionally lurk cynically in the shadows of articles touting online technologies and/or the possibilities they present. It's like: yeah, perhaps in a vacuum would such things be really cool.. but in the muckery of the reality of the online situation?

Reminds me of an engineer pulling me aside many years ago to say:

Q: What do you get when you mix half a gallon of ice cream with half a gallon of shit?

A: A gallon of shit.

You know?