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May 18

Rock On, @Debutaunt! You Will Be Loved Forever

May 18, 2009 • View Comments • Meet People in Austin

Not sure if you followed, but my sister, Debby Greer-Costello experienced a leukemia relapse and she suffered for six long months in a hospital bed.

Today, her spirit finally passed. I cannot tell you what a relief this is to know that such a beautiful person is no longer undergoing the pain and frustration that is cancer. Deb was such a fun and uplifting person. When you see such a fun person undergo such a taxing disease, it makes you question the justice in the universe. Seriously.

Although I am sad that I will never see my sister again, all is not lost. In my sister’s blog, she used to give people a mission to people everyday. If I know my sister at all, here are the missions she would give you now that she is gone:
1.) Take care of yourself. Whether you realize it or not, people really love you.
2.) Realize that every day is a gift and that every time you see someone, it could be the last. You will see that every person has worth.
3.) Look out for those who need your help the most. The hope you will give others is immeasurable.

I love you, Debster.
RIP Deborah Marie Greer-Costello
July 22, 1967-May 18, 2009
Steph and Deb Looking All Poor
Deb Feeding Little Me
Deb in Highschool
Deb with the Zo-ster

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May 16

GapingVoid “Create or Die” Adaptation

May 16, 2009 • View Comments • Online Marketing

I like Hugh MacLeod. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at his cartoons and said, “Yup. That’s what needed to be said.” Saying what needs to be said is hard. It’s painful for many to hear and often takes a lot of painful observation to create.

Hugh is taking pre-orders for his book Ignore Everybody. It’s funny–I’ve found myself following this advice and am now finding a lot of answers to questions I had. So in honor of Hugh, I asked his permission to publish my adaptation or “remix” of his “Create or Die” cartoon.
createordie!

I hope you like it.

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May 13

Social Media Changes Nothing. YOU Change It

May 13, 2009 • View Comments • Social Media for Social Good

I was on a panel with Scoble once where he matter-of-factly declared that anyone who eventually does not use social media will become irrelevant in future generations.

God. I hope not.

There is a certain amount of optimism among social media “evangelists” that this medium can change the world. Mediums don’t change anything–people do.

You can use a medium to help someone find a job or you can use it to spread horrible lies about people. It’s a tool. Social media is a tool like a cell phone is a tool. If you spend your time talking about that tool or about iPhone apps or traffic, you aren’t really changing anything. Which means the church group who got together to clean up Austin ghettos or run a soup kitchen did a whole lot more than you did with lesser technology. Is Adela Ben-Yakar, a pioneer in nanosurgery that would essentially treat disease in a non-invasive manner, somehow irrelevant because she doesn’t have time to Twitter? If you produce a brilliant film or product, and SOMEONE got light of it via a blog or network of some stripe, would it matter if you used social media? This is a ridiculous notion that I hope no one else holds.

Change comes about because someone feels compelled enough about a problem to do something about it. You can be a highly documented irrelevant person or a non-documented person who is highly relevant. Or you can be a balance of both.

Where is this post coming from? Because “through the wisdom of social media crowds”, apparently finding wifi is more important to Austin geeks voting on OpenAustin than keeping people safe or getting clean air. Something tells me that kind of change isn’t one worth pursuing.

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May 10

Please Vote for My Idea for OpenAustin.org

May 10, 2009 • View Comments • Politics and Current Events

About a year and a half ago, I had not only a cyber stalker, but a real stalker. This person did not see it this way–he just did not understand that his violent actions frightened me, and so therefore there was no way he would engage me in the dialog he was seeking.

I filed several cases with the police department. One time, I asked the woman on the phone to email me my case number instead of dictating it because I was in my car. Apparently, the city doesn’t do that. The city also doesn’t let you fill out paperwork online. To file for a restraining order, you go to the building across from the courthouse. To get victim’s assistance, you go to a building which I never visited, but sure isn’t close to the courthouse. To speak with investigators, there is a building by Ed Bluestein Blvd. way off of 183. To follow up with cases, you go to the police station off of 7th Street.

I pressed charges because this person was reading my email without my knowing it. Even though we have logs of his IP address accessing material only available in those emails, they never prosecuted. Even though he ALSO vandalized my property, found where I lived without me telling him and repeatedly came by unannounced, was physically harmful to me, and lied ON THE STAND about all of it. They never caught him because they have a log of other psychos to take care of, and since he wasn’t choking me like I heard from another victim at the courthouse, it was essentially “case closed”.

Guess what? You can’t fill out the paperwork to catch these bozos in your spare time. You have to do it when they are open. So even though YOU were victimized and YOU are doing everything you can to keep yourself safe, it is a bureaucratic nightmare to do so. Imagine driving around from office to office just to do something that would take a few hours online. I felt victimized twice. I felt angry that I paid taxes at all, because my government is supposed to protect me, and I had (and still have) nightmares about this person. What happened to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Why am I telling this story? Because Whurley’s gathering ideas for the city of Austin’s website. And my idea is that the city should make it easy to make people feel safe. Driving around during business hours, filling out paperwork, and writing all sorts of case numbers down when you are afraid to park your car in front of your house at night is ridiculous. Websites make geography obsolete. If I could have filled out this paperwork at home or on my lunch hour, I would have been finished sooner, which would have meant quicker restraining order and more safety for me.

Please vote for my idea. A lot of women aren’t as lucky as I am.

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May 04

Something to Think About Before You Go to Work…

May 4, 2009 • View Comments • Politics and Current Events

This passage is from the book A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. Even if you don’t like history, Gombrich captures what it is to be human. Hat tip to my sister for pointing it out.

Gombrich asks the reader to imagine he or she is on a plane at the end to survey all the places he recounts in the book. He then writes this:

“But now let us quickly drop down in our plane towards the river. From close up, we can see it is a real river, with rippling waves like the sea. A strong wind is blowing and there are little crests of foam on the waves. Look carefully at the millions of shimmering white bubbles rising and then vanishing with each wave. Over and over again, new bubbles come to the surface and then vanish in time with the waves. For a brief instant they are lifted on the wave’s crest and then they sink down and are seen no more. We are like that. Each one of us no more than a tiny glimmering thing, a sparkling droplet on the waves of time which flow past beneath us into an unknown, misty future. We leap up, look around us and, before we know it, we vanish again. We can hardly be seen in the great river of time. New drops keep rising to the surface. And what we call our fate is no more than our struggle in that great multitude of droplets in the rise and fall of one wave. But we must make use of that moment. It is worth the effort.”

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