The other harder part was to always tell the truth. I did have a major setback in feeling confident about the experiment when, due to a combination of multiple factors, my marriage ended. While it hurt immensely, I eventually decided to resume work on the experiment. I hinted at the experiment in the weeks before it started and discussed it with a couple of my close friends before deciding that come hell or high water on Dec 21st, 2009 I would begin. My twitter account was now ground zero for a whole new type of experiment (years and years ago I lived as a homeless person in Portland, Oregon for 6 weeks because I wanted to see what the actual effects on my own personality would be).

A few people including Pete Grillo, Steven Mcdade and Thomas Brenneke came perilously close to making me ‘out’ the experiment throughout 2010. My one rule to maintain telling the truth while taking an extremist tack was the same as used by Project Alpha: If asked why I was required to tell the person asking. Thanks to a few of you for keeping it secret by the way!

Unsurprisingly the end of the year conclusions came out fairly staid:

• People under the age of 25 are vastly more likely to positively respond to reactionary statements.
• People identifying as monotheists are more likely to unfollow when their ideologies are questioned or insulted than polytheists or atheists.
• People who use their faces as avatars are less likely to deviate from a moderate tone in their tweet stream.
• The amount of unengaged accounts went up at approximately the same ratio as my daily number of tweets. While many of these accounts aren’t necessarily spam it does indicate that neophyte users frequently just follow anyone in the stream who says things that they relate to. Nothing out of the ordinary there really.
• The number of spam accounts did spike rather heavily (up 23% the first week no less) as I began using more hashtags and keyworded phrases.
• One fact I’m quite proud of is that my fellow Portlanders were the group least likely to unfollow me based on my statements. When I looked at the data closer the numbers of “loyal” followers were split fairly evenly between liberal and conservative users. Which led me to conclude that Portland is more about speaking up than it is about partisanship. Not everyone in Portland may agree but they won’t necessarily unfollow you for it.
• At the 6 month mark I ramped up to following a large number of adult performers, strippers and cam girls throughout the world, again surprisingly Portland accounts took offense at a much lower rate than other cities.
• At the 9 month mark I began cycling on a 48 hours rude and 24 hours polite rate which resulted in very little differences to the statistics over time but did cause some upheaval during the switch from one state to the other.

The few really interesting realizations occurred in the way many of my long term friends and some quiet acquaintances changed the way they saw me over that year. Especially interesting was the group of people who publicly said one thing but privately said another. It speaks volumes about how even though we’re told to tell the truth as children, between the age of being a child and being a fully fledged grownup we lose those abilities to always be honest.
Of my personal favorite responses and results were:

• An active social media using tech executive from California regularly sent me a DM whenever I took certain topics to task thanking me for “saying what he would get fired for”.
• A VP of Marketing from a NYC based company sent me an email that read in part “Some of what you say is obviously calculated to get a response but nicely doesn’t come off as blind trolling. It would be nice if honesty of the level you approach was something marketers could capitalize on”.
• A former student from my drumline teaching days called me to ask if I was really that angry at the world and if there was anything they could do to help.

After going through the data and realizing that a lot of what our parents taught us is true, that how you speak affects how well you’re listened to I realize that the greatest lesson wasn’t the specifics of the data. My experiment was never about collating the many into a grand unified theory of sociology, it was about how the circle of friends and acquaintances I have change and adapt over time. Everyday our personalities go through varying degrees of flux. It’s a natural part of being human, what we must all learn to do is be honest to ourselves and to everyone else without remorse. It’s not a real decision if you’re not invested in it.

While I’ve got much of the data aggregated now I’m not able to share the full report at this time. When you blindly involve people in an experiment you don’t have a right to arbitrarily decide how to use their public identity. I’ll try to figure out a way to sanitize it enough to not force many people to have their information shared as part of this. I should add that I also am under an NDA which prevents me from releasing anymore data at this time. I will say thanks to the very cool company that liked the idea and paid me for the researchas well as provided me excellent resources for getting the missing data restored as much as possible. Thanks guys!

I feel enriched and also deeply humbled by the gamut of emotional responses to my words, my deeds and especially the number of new friends I made during the experiment.
To those of you who helped voluntarily or as subjects I say thank you very much.

What’s really interesting is realizing more and more that in order for me to be truly happy I need to embrace the person I was from age 19-22 much, much more.  I lived life in many ways like a hippy or beatnik. I worked when I needed money, I slept if I needed to but above all I never compromised my own values or ethics while at the same time keeping to my promise to always be equally mutually beneficial to any interactions I had. I forgot that along the way and that imbalance contributed to a lot of hurt to a lot of people who didn’t deserve it including myself. The adage “be true to yourself” means accepting the flaws inherent to who you are too.

I’m by no means glossing over my own immaturities throughout my life but there is a certain raw natural instinct that guides us at that age before the outside world forces us to change to be a better fit in society. The real question then is how useful is society if it requires that we not be ourselves (obvious nonharmful to others qualifier). So much of our society is about making a better you with stuff and lesser so on excelling on being ourselves.Why can’t we instead work towards promoting a better species instead of just being a vast network of interdependent snake oil salesmen.

So who is this new me? Or rather what is the “me” that has returned? That’s really an observational thing so find me somewhere at any of my favorite Portland haunts and see for yourself :D

1. If you had one tweet to summarize yourself what would it be?

“Redheaded, polyamorous, badass, tattooed, intellectual freak of nature. Wife, mother, friend, lover, complicated, musical, passionate.”

2. You won a pretty prestigious scholarship recently. What was it and how has it affected you?

I was awarded the Ford Family Foundation ReStart scholarship.  It is an amazing scholarship given to individuals over 25 who have limited college experience and are looking to educate themselves after devoting their adult life to raising a family or serving the community.

Being awarded the ReStart scholarship has been amazing for me.  I have been able to aggressively pursue the education I want at the institution I want without fear of having to pick up a full time job to help my family survive.  The scholarship is significant enough that I will also be able to graduate with less than $20,000 in student loans, which is amazing in this day and age.

3. I see you have a blog, what inspired it?

I began my blog in November of 2004, one month after I started reviewing adult toys for Freddy and Eddy; someone mentioned that a blog would be a reasonable step for me, since I love to write.  I had been a regular contributor on different forum systems and offered advice there, so it made perfect sense to begin a blog and start sharing the twists and turns of my life.  The self discovery and amazing journey has been a side benefit, but a pretty significant one.

4. You seem proud of your celtic heritage, what made you embrace it?

I think, honestly, I’ve been pretty well reminded of my heritage since I was young.  My grandparents brought home kilts for all of us after a trip to Europe when I was around 6 or so; my sister has hers framed in a shadow box and I plan to do the same.  Both of my parents are very interested in genealogy and have helped me study my family’s roots, which in turn got me interested in researching these people that I came from.  Beyond the bloodline, I have always felt a very real connection to Celtic spirituality and think that it is an important part of how I see myself.

5. Do you consider yourself a “sex blogger”

I sure do.  While I blog about things other than sex, my primary focus still tends to revolve around sensuality and eroticism.  I feel more at home in the “sex blogger” community than any other blogging “caste”, so to speak.

6. Since you’ve become a parent, how has that changed your sex life?

Well, that depends.  I think that my sex life has actually been more affected by my being a student than by being a parent, but both of those roles do directly affect my sexuality.  As a parent, I have responsibilities to care for my children and I expend a lot of energy doing so.  As a student, I have responsibilities to focus on my studies and do what it takes to get the most out of my schooling.  There difference between the two is that I can get help with parenting duties (can and, for the most part anymore, do get help) whereas I can’t ask someone else to do my studying for me and expect to learn anything.  Similarly, I don’t think that being a mom has adversely affected my ability to be a kinky, perverted sex goddess long term – in the beginning it took some reconciling my different roles.

7. You posted weeks ago on your blog that you “came out” about being poly to your speech class. Were you nervous?

Are you kidding?  I was pacing and ready to vomit going into that class, but I felt that if I was to be truly honest about who I am and what is important to me I had to find the courage to tell the truth about my family.

8. How did your classmates react?

Honestly, I was a little disappointed in the LACK of reaction.  No one asked any questions about polyamory afterwards, and only two of my classmates have said anything since then.  Both were positive and nonjudgmental about it, so I can’t complain there.

9. What inspires you about each of the following: parenting, education, technology, sexuality

I think, with parenting, what inspires me the most is the community of people I know and love.  My husbands and wife, my friends with children, other bloggers with children, Ian and Alicia Denchasy (of freddyandeddy.com), and realistically the entire support structure of friends and family I have surrounded myself with.  We all have different personalities and I see a great many wonderful things in each person that I can try to instill in my children.

10. What’s the most important object on the planet to you?

Object?  Oooooh, that’s hard.  I would say a computer, but that’s not entirely realistic.  I think the most important OBJECT on the planet to me is my cello.

11. Why is it so important?

All through my life, I have been a very subdued person.  Music is the only thing that brings out the passionate side of me, the personality that is always hidden behind these walls and defenses.  My cello has the strongest effect on me, and without that, without the opportunity to express my true personality, I am nothing.

12. Worst thing you’ve ever done to someone?

Heh… I had to think about this one for a LONG time.  I think the worst thing I’ve done to someone is put a rainbow sticker on a severely homophobic person’s car.

13. Did they deserve it?

Oh, she definitely deserved it.  Trust me.

14. How would you change the world to make it better?

I would magically make people tolerant to alternative lifestyles.

15. Favorite 5 bloggers?

Oh crap… this is a hard one. Besides you? The five that I’ve been following religiously the longest are:

• Twisted Monk
• Shay
• Ell
• Goose and Gander
• Bondage Blog

I have SO many more that I follow now, though, and have made a ridiculous number of blogfriends in the last several months that it’s ridiculously hard to answer that question without feeling like I’m missing a bunch of people.

If you’d like to learn more about Angela you can find her here:

@CelticFrog
SwelteringCelt.com (this is not very work safe so surf with caution)

In an amazingly awesome post made by Jane Wells (@janeforshort) over on the official WordPress.com blog she announced the release date (and time no less) of the amazingly awesome WordPress 2.7. She’s kind enough to deliver in textual form the great presentation she was uh..presenting at all of the wordcamp she’s been attending (ours was best though).

Anyhow I’m not going to rehash all of the great new features but I will point out my personal reasons for switching to 2.7 way back before beta 1 was even released (yeah I roll that dangerously on my site, but never customers though).

• QuickPress – A new admin dashboard widget that lets you type up and save or even publish a quick blog post. This has helped get me from 2 drafts waiting for finishing up to 31 post ideas that I was able to quickly summarize the idea without leaving my dashboard
• Add New Plugin – No longer do you need to have an ftp app or any other method to adding a new plugin. Simply type in the keywords or name of a plugin you want and it lets you install it right from your dashboard. This one is great since I had a plugin that was breaking my rss feed and was able to delete it and replace it with similar functionality while on Thanksgiving vacation on my iphone. Handy :D
• Quick Edit – Easily add/remove tags without having to open the entire post. This is also quite a timesaver.

Anyhow those are my 3 favorite new functions in WordPress 2.7.

Go get switched over (and if you’re in Portland we’ll be having an Upgrade release party within the next week. Food, drink and all the help you need to upgrade (or even migrate) your site to the goodness that is WordPress 2.7.

I was tasked with interviewing the Unreliable Narrator who is a good friend of one of my twitter peeps. I had a blast interviewing her and one of the most fun parts was coming up with ideas for questions. My interview was conducted by “Jake to Universe” and was chock full of thoughtful questions that made me think as well.

So here’s the rules (lifted from the original site with all due credit to Citizen of the Month).

Here’s how it is going to work. The first person who comments on this post, will get interviewed by me. I will read the person’s blog, then email him ten or so specific questions, hopefully more about his life (what makes them tick) than their favorite blogger (too obvious! — me). I’ll give my interviewee as much time as necessary to answer the questions, but hopefully he’ll finish it by next week. There might be a back-and-forth if the person feel uncomfortable with a question, etc. or if I want to explore a topic further. Finally, when it is all written up, I will polish the draft, send it back, and the interviewee can proudly publish the interview on their own blog.

It doesn’t end there. While I am interviewing the first commenter, he will be interviewing the second commenter. The second commenter will be interviewing the third commenter. Each person should then put their own interview on their own blog, or on the interviewer’s blog, or both (your choice!), answering the questions as openly and honestly as he chooses. Not only will this give others a new way to know you, but we will sabotage the idea of an interview only being for “somebody.” Everyone is somebody.

Pretty simple right? To make contacting each other easier, add your twitter name if you have one.

If you leave a comment, you’re in…

*** Update 11/26 ***
Since as the organizer of this strange little experiment I was not slated to be interviewed by anyone. Thanks to the always awesome Rick Turoczy of SiliconFlorist.com and @turoczy on twitter (like you didn’t know that) will be interviewing me.

Keep getting the word out on the Portland Great Interview Experiment :)

*** Update 12/02 ***
Have just been notified that Zola Marquis is a spam account (I HATE manual spammer garbage). Sorry for that.

*** Update 12/06 ***
Quite a few new folks have signed up and the number of finished interviews have grown a bit the last few days.

I will keep on adding to the list of interviewers/interviewees.

The list:

I’m interviewing Angela Leach aka CelticFrog on twitter.
Angela Leach is interviewing Alsymer.
Alsymer is interviewing Melissa Lion aka melissalion
Melissa Lion is intrviewing Eva Schweber aka Evacatherder
Eva is interviewing Banana Lee Fishbones aka Verso
Banana Lee Fishbones is interviewing Radiogretchen
Radiogretchen is interviewing Camikaos.
Camikaos is interviewing Kathleen McDade
Kathleen is interviewing Audrey
Audrey is interviewing Michelle
Michelle is interviewing Crystal Beasley
Crystal is interviewing MizD
MizD is interviewing David Kominsky
David Kominsky is interviewing Grant Kruger
Grant Kruger is interviewing Dawn Foster
Dawn Foster is interviewing J P Voilleque
J P Voilleque is interviewing Stephanie Stricklen
Stephanie Stricklen is interviewing Corina
Corina is interviewing Betsy Richter
Betsy Richter is interviewing Michael Buchino
Michael Buchino is interviewing Tylersticka
Tylersticka is interviewing Adron B. Hall
Adron B. Hall is interviewing Rebekah Villon
Rebekah Villon is interviewing Liz Grover
Liz Grover is interviewing Theressa Davis
Theressa Davis is interviewing Dale Chumbley
Dale Chumbley is interviewing Mark Colman
Mark Colman is interviewing Daniel Erickson
Daniel Erickson is interviewing Carolynn Duncan
Carolynn Duncan is interviewing Nick Bostic
Nick Bostic is interviewing Steve Woodward
Steve Woodward is interviewing Bill Jackson
Bill Jackson is interviewing Isaac Szymanczyk
Isaac Syzmanczyk is interviewing Amber Case
Amber Case is interviewing Doc Normal
Doc Normal is interviewing John Metta
John Metta is interviewing Doug Coleman
Doug Coleman is interviewing Tari Donohue
Tari Donohue is interviewing Boaz Frankel
Boaz Frankel is interviewing Mark Dilley
Mark Dilley is interviewing Alex C. Williams
Alex C. Williams is interviewing Alex H. Williams
Alex H. Williams is interviewing @unclenate
Uncle Nate is interviewing Nate Angell
Nate Angell is interviewing Marie Deatherage
Marie Deatherage is interviewing Ramona White
Ramona White is interviewing Jeff Martens
Jeff Martens is interviewing Cameron Adamez
Cameron Adamez is interviewing Bram Pitoyo
Bram Pitoyo is interviewing Matt Youell
Matt Youell is interviewing Amye Scavarda
Amye Scavarda is interviewing Meilin Miranda
Meilin Miranda is interviewing Jason Ruby
Jason Ruby is interviewing Designmama
Designmama is interviewing Heathred
Heathred is interviewing Reid BeelsReid Beels is interviewing Dr P Fenderson

Janie Hendrix, stepsister of the late Jimi Hendrix as well as CEO of Experience Hendrix said.

“We’re all devastated to hear of Mitch’s passing, He was a wonderful man, a brilliant musician and a true friend. His role in shaping the sound of the Jimi Hendrix Experience cannot be underestimated.”

Mitchell had just finished his last US tour date in Portland with Experience Hendrix and was taking a 4 day vacation.

When I was a high school student I first discovered Hendrix and his music really moved me. I learned to play drums playing along with Mitch. You’ll be missed, it’s a shame that I missed seeing you perform again. Seeing you play way back in the mid 1990′s was a huge treat to me. While I’m sad you had to go, it’s nice that you got a few days to experience Portland.

Not too much to report at the moment on that but expect:

Drumcorps talk (Did you know that the last time a democrat won the election that the Phantom Regiment won DCI? 1996 and 2008. Very cool).

Drinking (yay!) (he’s not hefe he’s my bitter)

Doctor Who (Nooo David Tennant can’t quit the show Nooooo!)

and even that thing that just happe (holy crap Obama is our next President!!)

Plus maybe a semi secret surprise announcement from yours truly. (I let it out in a few tweets over on twitter)

Alrighty tune in tonight at 10pm on http://strangelovelive.com to hear my thoughts and conversations with the awesome hosts. It’ll be stupendifying!

For those of you checking this out for the links I promised during the presentation, let me know if you found any other great plugins I may have missed or if you have any questions about how to configure these plugins and I’ll see if I can help :D

After the slides are the links to all of the plugins.

The top 13 plugins featured in my presentation

• Disqus
• Twitter Tools
• WP-OpenID
• Clean Archives Reloaded
• WP 2.5 Gallery Lightbox
• WP Super Cache
• WP-Contact Form
• Mint: A Fresh Look at your Site
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
• iPhone Webclip Manager
• WP-DB Manager
• WordPress Automatic Upgrade
• Sociable

There you have. Keep checking back for my ongoing series of posts on the best new plugins and ways to better your blog as well as other hints, tips and tricks to help make your blog stand out.

*UPDATE*

Here’s the much requested “honorable mention” plugins list:

• WP Calais Autotagger
• WP Calais Archive Tagger
• Fluency Admin Dashboard theme (will be deprecated with the release of WordPress 2.7)
• iWphone (theme for iphones)
• Treasurelicious (widget)

Thanks to Dale Chumbley for recording this. While I shudder a bit at some of the bad jokes I made to ease my own palpable tension it’s nice to see that it came out ok.

Before I get to the video I want to thank everyone of the presenters, the attendees and Aaron Hockley for giving me one of the greatest experiences with the Portland Tech community. Reading the responses on twitter to my presentation as well as the experts panel really made my day. Additionally getting to finally meet Viper007Bond who’s written some great plugins (some of which should be core, but more on that at a later date) & Marshall Kirkpatrick as well as a few other people was awesome.

Without further ado here’s the video (I’d recommend headphones for this).

Direct Link to the video

Also keep checking the WordcampPDX site for information on the next wordcamp here as well as a possible November 10th upgrade party to version 2.7!

In the short term I’ve decided to return to my roots a bit and focus more on building my portfolio up a bit more and taking a few classes to bone up on my all around skillset as a network engineer and also as a web developer.

What’s coming up in my personal future:

• The soon to be unveiled new project
• The soon to be fully launched “Portland Dreams” site
• A resurgence in my participation in the Portland Tech Community (add my absence as another failing of my former employer. How can you possibly be a vibrant tech organization when 95% of the rest of the tech community has never heard of you?)
• More baby pictures than you can possibly shake a stick at. (why in the hell would you be shaking a stick at pictures of my babies? They’re awesome and cute. Plus the littlest one’s drool is a proven cure for dryness)
• Massive note taking and rehearsal to give a decent couple of panels at Wordcamp next month. This will be my return to the world of public speaking (for those unaware, it’s been about 12 years since I’ve done anything remotely resembling public speaking). If anyone wants to give me a pair of New Balance sneakers to go with my black turtleneck and jeans that’d be great :D

On the work related side (and as part of a return to my graphic/designer roots):

• The soon to relaunch site for the Percussion line I’m in.
• Wordcamp Portland limited theme
• Launching a photography site for a former coworker from the K. Falls newspaper
• Completion and launch of 3 plugins on the WordPress.org site.

While not on either list I’ll also be endeavoring to write at least 2-3 posts a week from now on as well as increasing the number of Howto articles as well.

In the last bit of news I also recently switched to Disqus for my commenting needs. For those not in the know this means I have a few new features for my little spot on the web.

Features of the new Disqus WordPress plugin:

• Comments are indexable by search engines (SEO-friendly)
• Export and import of comments
• Automatic synchronization between Disqus.com and your WordPress comments
• Uses the new Disqus API
• Moderate/administer your blog right from the WordPress admin

Very cool stuff and they even have integrated Seesmic support for video commenting which is just awesomely cool.

Well that’s it for now, I’ve got work to be done and eventually my In-law’s swimming pool to hop into. See you all on the flip side.

Lastly:

• RIP Bernie Mac & Isaac Hayes.
• Major congrats to the Phantom Regiment for winning their 2nd DCI title. This version of Spartacus was amazing and I enjoyed getting to see it twice this summer. Way to go! Hope you guys come west again next year!

The boys in a rare moment of semiquietness.

Cadence Management Podcast.

Excellent podcasts on project management skills and training. Definitely a must listen for anyone managing people, projects or anything in between from Portland’s own Cadence Management.

Tags: cadence, project management, podcast, business, pmi

Open Parenthesis » WordPress to Facebook and Back Again

Wow, a wordpress plugin that crossposts to facebook (and crossposts comments as well it appears!!!)

Tags: crosspost, wordpress, plugin, wordpress plugin, facebook, comments

ManyBooks.net – Free eBooks for your PDA, iPod, or eBook Reader

Thousands of free ebooks, pre-formatted for reading on your computer, PDA, Blackberry, iPod, iLiad, Sony Reader, Librie, Zaurus, Newton, eBookman, or Rocketbook – eReader, PDF, Plucker, iSilo, Doc, RTF, Mobipocket, Newton Paperback, and zTXT ebooks ready to go!

Tags: books, ebooks, free books, iphone, ipod, kindle

Monotone WordPress Theme

Brilliant wordpress theme that is quite similar in concept to the way Dave Shea of mezzoblue.com has his site setup. This theme is perfect for photoblogging since the site will always color complement the photo.

Tags: theme, wordpress, photoblog, photo, clean