Since 04/30/2002, my 401k has increased 2%.

The trigger has been pulled, though. It is being liquidated to help pay for graduate school.

Gulya’s Second Song from Brian Woods on Vimeo.

This is the second song Gulya sang for us. It’s a traditional song that’s hundreds of years old.

Gulya Murtazayeva Sings from Brian Woods on Vimeo.

This is the first excerpt from the first oral history I did last month. It’s a song in Crimean Tatar that Gulya wrote with her husband.

After a month in Ukraine and another few days to readjust from Eastern European Time, I am home and functional.

I left for Ukraine with a goal of completing six interviews for Eastword. I ended up with seven, including a two hour, audio-only interview with my Russian tutor. Watch for these in the weeks ahead as we get them transcribed and translated.

I will post a couple of excerpts in a bit, though.

Nikki Finke’s deadline.com has the scoop on the This American Life movie!

The Coast Guard has new rules for the oil spill cleanup area. Let’s look at them.

The Captains of the Port for Morgan City, La., New Orleans, La., and Mobile, Ala. , under the authority of the Ports and Waterways Safety Act, has established a 20- meter safety zone surrounding all Deepwater Horizon booming operations and oil response efforts taking place in Southeast Louisiana.

Vessels must not come within 20 meters of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.

The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom.

In areas where vessels operators cannot avoid the 20-meter rule, they are required to be cautious of boom and boom operations by transiting at a safe speed and distance.

Violation of a safety zone can result in up to a $40,000 civil penalty. Willful violations may result in a class D felony.

Permission to enter any safety zone must be granted by the Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New Orleans by calling 504-846-5923.

Journalists are outraged with CNNs Anderson Cooper saying this is a way to hide “incompetence and failure.” Cooper sees it as a direct attack on first amendment rights.

I prefer to look at their shoddy wording of the order.

“The Captains of the Port for Morgan City, La., New Orleans, La., and Mobile, Ala., has established a 20- meter safety zone surrounding all Deepwater Horizon booming operations and oil response efforts taking place in Southeast Louisiana”

According to a literal reading of this, I might be barred from Middendorf’s if someone is cleaning up Lake Pontchartrain near Pontchatoula. If the order is extended to the other gulf states, how would picking up tarballs on the beach impact casinos? Would I need Coast Guard permission to visit a store that has tarballs within view?

The bottom line is that we are no longer as well off as the Addams Family.

The newest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthy is out now. Inside is a well written article on potential unionization of game developers. It’s definitely worth a read.

It’s a transformation that likely isn’t going to happen any time soon because of a variety of factors. One of them, though, stands out particularly. Game developers have a perception that unions aren’t for them and their work.

"Unions? Meh."

Of course, that’s the usual opinion from the CEOs office, but his is a view that pervades a lot of the younger generation. In my 20s, I worked for KOAT, Albuquerque’s ABC affiliate. The station had recently organized. Just after I left my almost three year stint there, the station was able to bust the union mostly due to member apathy.

These TV stations churn through people like game developers. Albuquerque is the kind of city you go to for a couple of years, make a good reel, then go on to bigger and better things. Management policies impact you minimally because by the time a bad decision comes back to haunt the station, you are long gone. It’s also in the stations interest to keep employee churn going because newer employees make less than older employees. Also, the longer an employee is around, the more likely they are to plant some roots and thus need the union guaranteed benefits.

What people need to realize, though, is that it isn’t just cable splicers, clothes sewers and machine operators who are union members. In local television, photojournalists, writers, editors, graphics operators and more are potential union members. Ultimately anyone in a position to be abused by the company is a potential union member.

Those people are all “low wage” people, or, at least, are perceived that way. Who else is a member of a union, though? Steven Spielberg. Clint Eastwood. Sean Connery. George Clooney. David Fincher. Guillermo Del Toro. Peter Jackson. Frank DePalma. James Cameron.

These are people who have the potential to make huge sums of money based on the deals their agents and unions bargain for them. If the protections afforded them weren’t valuable, do you think Spielberg would still be a dues-paying member?

What does being a union member get you? For starters, it gets you job protection. You also get a fair salary. Days off are a perk. Time with your family is always a benefit, and if you are forced to work instead of being able to spend time with your family, you will be duly compensated.

Sadly most younger workers are too short-sighted to see these benefits. In videogames, there is a culture born that says sleeping at work is what you want to do. It shows you are dedicated to the project. It says you are part of a team.

The problem, though, is it isn’t your team. It’s Bobby Kotick’s. As soon as he is finished with you, you’re out–recycled–replaced with a cheaper and newer part.

When it’s your time, do you want a safety net to keep you from the scrap heap?

That would be by watching a newly restored version of Battleship Potemkin in high def while pausing the intertitles to read and translate them from Russian.

We Southerners get pretty crazy celebrating, let me tell you!

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

I remember my first internet experience. I was just starting at Southern Miss and my new roommate, Keith, had a computer. He offered to put it in the living room so everyone in the house could use it for work. My brother and I happened to have an AOL disk, so we installed it and went online.

The first thing we did was go into a chatroom. Maybe now it seems silly, but the second thing we did online was get a Prodigy disk, install it, go online and into a beginner’s chatroom and ask, “What does “lol” mean?” With the answer in hand, we went back to AOL and went on to down hundreds of dollars over the next several months. As my brother and another roommate spent a lot of time looking at porn, eventually Keith moved the computer into his bedroom.

By then it wasn’t hard to get the money from my parents to buy my own PC.

Just thinking about those heady days makes me misty-eyed. Now we all know AOL was a walled garden, but in the beginning, we had no idea. We thought that’s what the internet was. Eventually we found out that if you used Internet Explorer or Netscape outside of AOL, when your connection broke (as regularly happened), you wouldn’t lose your webpage.

What was it that made AOL so successful in those early days? Was it the community? Not for me. I have one friend from online who I still talk to from those days. Was it the games? No, I hated Slingo from the first game of it I played.

I think it was just ignorance that kept everyone paying for so long. My first attempt to use another ISP was the first time I ever heard the term Winsock. It drove me back to AOL where I waited until Netdoor came along. Even after that, when someone asked how the internet worked, it was pretty easy to grab one of the thousands of discs AOL was distributing and send them on their way.

Everything ends, though.

Of course in my mind our modern equivalent of AOL is Facebook. It has chat, it has games, it has instant messaging. All the banality of AOL without the hourly (then monthly) access fee.

There are some differences, though. AOL supplied you with news and information. With Facebook, your friends supply you with news and information. While AOL used the Associated Press, your friends might not be the greatest or most reliable sources of news.

Farmville is as ubiquitous as it is terrible. I know one person who plays it, but at least she is aware it’s just a time filler. It really is a Slingo for the modern age. And just like Slingo, it’s aging housewives who keep it going. Worse than AOL, though, are the forced updates you get via Facebook about people’s progress…that is until you learn how to hide them.

Facebook has groups just like classic AOL did. It helps you keep up with your friends, family and coworkers, just like AOL did. It also has the ability to completely soak up hours of your time just like AOL did.

The biggest thing it did just like AOL, though, is it wore out its welcome. Where a year ago, I was a regular user, now I hardly log in. The thing is, again, just like AOL, when your great aunt Lillian has a Facebook account, just how cool can it really be? Let’s not forget that Aunt Lillian just got online with her new DSL, so you will be educating her about the ‘net one painful message at a time.

It will be interesting to see if Facebook can hold all its users or if they eventually all migrate away. People are pretty fickle. Already Myspace is down for the count having been completely steamrolled by Facebook. What about Brightkite and Virb? Will they turn Facebook into the new new AOL?

Only time and user interest will tell.