To Blog or Not to Blog?

Danelle and I have a little difference of opinion about my blog.

I love it. I think it helps keep my writing skills sharp, demonstrates the power and effectiveness of word-of-mouth to build an audience and provides hard evidence of my proficiency in the types of Web 2.0 tools I'm telling potential employers I have expertise with.

Danelle hates it. Actually, her exact words recently were "violently opposed." She thinks it reveals too much personal information about me and our family, sometimes presents me as crass and unintelligent and raises red flags for potential employers about my discretion (or lack thereof) and commitment to my job search.

Here's the thing -- we're both right.

With the exception of the effect on my writing abilities (and even that's somewhat subjective), all of the items above are based primarily on people's perceptions. I think that e-mailing info about one of my posts to The Big Lead, one of the most widely read sports blogs around, that resulted in them linking to my post and bringing in hundreds of new readers was a fantastic viral marketing move. Someone else may find it self-serving and disingenuous. Danelle thinks putting a picture of Zak in a post is a breach of our family's privacy. I can't discount or dismiss her feelings, since she is by definition a part of the family. But I thought it was harmless and the most relevant image I could find to go with the post.

On a side note, when I observed that her heightened concern about our safety meant she probably watched too much 20/20, she retorted that maybe I don't watch enough. Touché.

What's at the heart of these different perspectives? There's been suggestions that much of it is generational. Younger people are accustomed to more transparency in their lives thanks to everything from "reality TV" to YouTube. Older folks -- and at our age Danelle and I both fall into that category for any discussion of the internet -- have more clearly defined boundaries for what they share with other people, especially total strangers.

My mom drove that point home one day when I excitedly told her that I'd reconnected with some friends from high school on Facebook. She snorted and replied, "I don't use MyFace or Spacebook or any of that crap." Once I stopped laughing, I told her she probably had no idea how completely awesome that remark was.

Fast-forward a couple of months, and that same mom (I only have one) jots the note "Enjoying blog!" on my Father's Day card. If blogging and social networking are fundamentally similar parts of the whole "Web 2.0" phenomenon, how can she embrace one and dismiss the other? Possibly because one opinion was based on substance, and the other on something else. Maybe misinformation, maybe fear of the unknown. But she didn't even know the names of the two biggest social nets in the world -- she just knew she had no use for them.

This is where I think the rubber really hits the road. Blogs aren't inherently "evil" or "dangerous" in the same way that video games, heavy metal and comic books aren't. It's all about how they're used. If someone blogs on company time, or blogs about how much they hate minorities or shares confidential business information on their blog, it's really not the blog that's the problem. If blogs didn't exist, those behaviors would just manifest themselves in different ways. Blogs don't get people fired; people get people fired.

Is there a risk that a potential employer will stumble across my blog, read the line from a past post where I use the word "pit" in talking about how difficult it is to apply deodorant with a broken wrist and conclude that I'm too vulgar to hire? I suppose so. But do I really want to work for a company that would reach that sort of conclusion based on one data point and discount everything else they learned about me? Probably not.

Ditto for an organization that's uncomfortable with transparency. I believe strongly that the benefits of having an open dialogue with customers, empowering them to be critical and embracing those criticisms, has benefits that far outweigh the potential risks. Where the line gets drawn of how much information is too much is certainly open to debate; but as far as I'm concerned that debate is a healthy one to have.

Back to the fear of the unknown issue -- it's human nature to demonize things we don't understand. So some try to blame society's current ills on things like "the internet," as if it was a conscious and malevolent entity and not just a series of tubes. But all "the internet" basically does is accelerate the pace and extend the reach of communication.

Pen pals and ham radio were once the most techonologically advanced ways we had to try and fulfill another aspect of human nature, the need to connect with other people. Jim Saccomano, VP of PR for the Denver Broncos, noted that Thomas Paine was probably one of the first bloggers. He circumvented the mainstream press and used conversational language to speak directly to his audience in his Common Sense pamphlet. So while the way people use the internet today is more evolution than revolution, the tool still freaks people out. I blame Hal from 2001 for the irrational fear of computers, but for whatever reason the fear exists.

Heather Armstrong strikes me as a case of where both these factors combined to have unfortunate consequences. I heard her speak as part of a panel at the SXSW Interactive Festival in March. She's a "blogebrity" who's fairly well known in those circles for getting fired from her job back in 2002 for reasons that had something to do with her personal web site. I don't know the specifics. I haven't even read her side of the story in detail. But what's pretty obvious is that she and her employer had different perspectives on the transparency/privacy subject. And given that this happened in 2002 when the word "blog" couldn't even be used in Scrabble, I'm willing to bet that some folks in her company got the heebie-jeebies just from hearing the word "internet." Doesn't matter that she worked for a web development company; somebody in power over there just didn't get it and overreacted.

Another side note -- Heather's blog makes enough dough from ad revenues that it's now her family's sole source of income. Not bad for a fairly ordinary person who's extraordinarily comfortable being transparent and a halfway decent writer. So there's hope for the other 15 million of us with blogs, much like the hope I get when Zak throws a football that doesn't rotate end over end that he'll one day be an NFL quarterback.

I don't know exactly where this leaves me. I know that I'm going to keep blogging. But I also let Danelle see this post before I put it up and made a couple of changes at her request. I'm also going to probably cross lines from time to time in what certain people consider appropriate -- it's challenging to know that your mother-in-law and drinking buddy both read your blog. But at the same time it's not my purpose to shock or offend, and I'm going to apply what I consider to be common-sense standards to my language and subject matter.

And while Danelle and I may both be right, when it comes to finding my next professional opportunity I'm going to hope like heck that I'm a little more right.

At My Current Pace, Expect Another Serious Biking Injury in 2020

"You did a number on it."

Those were my doctor's first words to me after she looked at the x-rays of my wrist. Not quite as ominous as "Do you have your affairs in order?", but definitely not what I was hoping for.

She went on to give me the more detailed diagnosis that I had a comminuted fracture of one of my wrist bones, a small break at the end of my ulna and some ligament damage. So I'm apparently going to have to put my baton twirling aspirations on the backburner for a while.

The timing of something like this happening is probably never good. But I'm especially bummed since Zak and Taryn are staying home with me starting tomorrow, and this is undoubtedly going to put some sort of cramp in what we're able to do together for a while.

The reality of becoming Mr. Mom was hammered home effectively by the nice nun who admitted me to have my x-rays taken. She asked if I still worked for the Broncos and I told her no. She asked who I worked for now and I told her nobody, so she said she'd put down unemployed. I laughed and replied that I was going to be a full-time dad starting tomorrow. She paused, then said, "I'll just go with 'homemaker,' then." I had to laugh again.

So no activity at all with my left hand until I go see the specialist on Wednesday. No driving, no typing, no cat's cradle -- you get the idea.

This isn't my first solid mountain biking injury. Back in 1996 when we still lived in Texas I hit an exposed root going down a steep incline and flipped over my handlebars, landing square on my right shoulder blade. I popped right up but the pain put me right back down to the ground.

Fortunately I was with a couple of buddies who walked me and my bike the mile or so back to the car, called Danelle and then drove me to the emergency room. I got x-rays and the doctor who looked at them told me it looked like I'd just been "rode hard and put up wet" and I should be fine, but he referred me to an orthopedist for follow-up just in case.

When I got home and told Danelle the diagnosis, she suggested I look in the mirror. I could have passed for Quasimodo's brother -- my right shoulder looked a good six inches higher than my left.

Needless to say, a quick call was made to that orthopedist to schedule a follow-up. He took one look at my x-rays and said, "It's separated all right. When do you want the surgery?" Turned out that when I landed on my shoulder blade and drove it in, my collarbone was driven up and all the connective tissue in between was completely torn.

I wasn't expecting to hear the "s" word, so I asked if non-surgical treatment was an option. He said sure, but my right arm would always be about 10% weaker and I'd have a "cosmetic deformity." So I asked what the downside was of surgery. He just shrugged and said, "Surgery."

So I got an inch-and-a-half screw put in for six weeks while things healed. Danelle thought it would be neat to watch it get taken out, but changed her mind when they gave me a local anisthetic, cut my shoulder back open and stuck a screwdriver in there. The sound of screwdriver on bone is a little disconcerting, especially when it's your bone (or your spouse's).

The surgery was apparently a success since I really haven't had any problems with the shoulder since. I wore the screw on a cord around my neck for a while but lost it, so my only remaining memento of the experience is a pretty cool scar.

My mom probably summed it up best when I told her about my latest misadventure. "You and mountain biking; you don't crash often but make up for it when you do."

Hopefully I won't have anything more than a scar to remember this experience by, too. In any event, this certainly isn't going to make me take up running.

And yes, I typed this whole thing with my right hand. :P

It Was Probably A Lot Warmer In There, Too

Whenever my dad came to my high school soccer games, he wouldn't sit in the stands with the other parents. He'd stay in his car and do paperwork.

That used to really bug me. Being different wasn't cool in high school, and that included my folks being different. Why couldn't he just sit in the stands like everybody else?

It never occurred to me that if he didn't multitask by doing his paperwork at the game he wouldn't have had time to come at all. My dad started his own business selling and servicing industrial scales when I was in second grade. He HAD to make sure things like the paperwork got done.

He wanted to name the company Yankee Scale, but someone advised him that you wanted to show up early in the Yellow Pages listings so Action Scale it was. My mom worked with him, too. That provided flexibility for her to be home when we finished school each day and over summer vacation -- something else I just sort of took for granted.

He'd sometimes take me along with him on business trips. Not glamorous golf outings in warm locales -- 4 1/2-hour drives to places like Ogdensburg and Massena in the dead of winter for repair calls. But it was a chance for us to spend time together.

He never pressured me to take over the family business, but there was always work I could do if I needed to earn some extra money. From cleaning the bathrooms to organizing the parts lab to crawling around cleaning truck scale pits. Action Scale put food on our table and a roof over our heads, not to mention putting Dawn and I both through college.

Like I've written before, my dad passed away back in 1998. My mom eventually sold the business. All that's probably left of Action Scale now is a polo shirt and a couple of screwdrivers she sent me when she moved away from Albany a few years later.

I don't believe he enjoyed trying to do paperwork on a clipboard propped up on his steering wheel while he watched us get pummeled by Shenendahowa. And I don't believe I ever thanked him enough for doing it.

Happy Father's Day, dad. And thanks for being there.

What's Up With the Shirt?

As a kid in upstate New York in the late '70s, you were pretty much a free agent when it came to forming your sports allegiances. A three-hour drive from Boston, three hours from New York City and 4 1/2 from Buffalo. There was no real "home team" so my pro sports affiliations were mostly influenced by my parents, but in inconsistent ways.

For example, my mom was a Bruins fan and a Red Sox fan, so I was, too. But something weird happened with football and basketball. My dad liked the Steelers, my mom liked the Giants, so I chose to cheer for...the Cowboys. It probably didn't hurt that they were always on TV, and that their cheerleaders were on The Love Boat.

My mom didn't care much about basketball, but my dad rooted for the Celtics. So I became a 76ers fan. I'm sure a therapist could have a field day with all of this stuff, but for now let's just accept that it is what it is.

The Celtics got the best of the Sixers more often than not, but that was all right by me. They had their one shining moment in 1983. I even won a dollar betting Sheila Kleinmann that Philly would beat the Lakers in the NBA Finals that year. The little snot paid me with a Ziploc bag filled with 100 pennies, but I still got mine.

I really hated those '80s Celtics teams. That little punk Danny Ainge. Kevin McHale, some weird mix of Alan Alda and Frankenstein. Dennis Johnson and his freckles (God rest his soul). Robert Parish, even scrubs like Scott Wedman and Greg Kite. And of course, Larry Bird. Man, he bugged me -- the mullet, the total disdain for anything remotely athletic, and the fact that he was really, really, really good. I rooted for the Lakers to beat them when they met in the Finals, and the Pistons to beat the last remnants of that team when they met in the playoffs in the latter part of the decade.

I've held on to some of my old sports animosities. Even though I live in Denver, I don't like the Avalanche in part because they used to be the Bruins' old rival, the Quebec Nordiques. And because Patrick Roy was their goalie when we moved here and they acquired him from the Bruins' other rival, the Montreal Canadiens. And I think I'll always have a special place of loathing in my heart for the Yankees. But over the years I've softened on the Celtics.

Maybe it's because they became pretty bad and irrelevant for a while, and it's not as much fun to root against a team when they stink. Maybe Jerry Seinfeld was right that with free agency resulting in so much player movement, at the end of the day you're just rooting for laundry. Maybe it's because since my dad passed away back in 1998 I haven't had a Celtics fan to debate with and keep a degree of personal competition afloat. But once again, it is what it is.

Here's the real twist in this story -- I'm absolutely rooting for the Celtics to not only beat the Pistons tonight, but to win the NBA Championship. And I think the single biggest reason for that is the addition of Kevin Garnett.

Garnett's always been an appealing personality to me since he did his ESPN The Magazine and Nike commercials in his early years in the league. I like his nickname, "The Big Ticket." I like his intensity on the court -- ESPN writer Bill Simmons actually refers to him (affectionately, I believe) as TCIKG for "The Completely Insane Kevin Garnett." And I think for most casual fans, he's put himself into the category of "athletes you'd like to see win a championship before they retire." The sports media tend to like those types of stories -- see Jerome Bettis with the Steelers a few years ago.

Now, I'll admit I'm starting to get a little oversaturated by all the hype around "The Big Three" of Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. Overexposure could result in a backlash (David Beckham, anyone?). And don't get me started on how the NBA completely ripped off their "There can only be one" playoff ad campaign from Highlander. But for now I'll keep pulling for the C's.

Well, for Kevin Garnett anyway. Danny Ainge is now the Celtics general manager, and he's still a little punk.

Maybe sports hostility never completely dies after all...

UPDATE: Garnett scored 33 points -- his most in this year's playoffs -- and hit a pair of free throws in the closing seconds to put the game out of reach in Boston's 106-102 win last night. I'm officially declaring being featured in this blog the anti-SI Cover Jinx.