Introducing Hannah Dori Scoble (picture taken shortly after her birth today). Yes, another Scobleization! I'm an Uncle. Uncle Scoble. That sounds weird.

I see that Fawcette put up a version of the conference schedule that I sent them on Monday. It's changed quite a bit since then. I guess I'll put together a newer version and post it here. Just don't yell at me that it was done with Microsoft Word, OK? Or I'll send you all my SPAM that I've collected since I left UserLand (all 8000+ of them). Heh.

Oh, did anyone see that EBay is having a conference? That'd be fun to attend.

If you look at me one way, I'm like a hamburger. Some brands of hamburger (like McDonalds) will rarely disappoint. They will rarely thrill either. Some are like backyard BBQ. Sometimes they are burnt and taste like shit. Other times they are the best hamburgers in the world.

I'm more like the latter. When you hire me, you never know what you'll get.

:-)

To tell you the truth, though, Dave hired me at the absolute low point of my 37-year life here on earth. My career was blowing up. My marriage was blowing up. And, I just wanted to ride the weblogger rollercoaster.

I wasn't a good employee, but maybe I'm a better friend. I don't know.

Maybe we're friends cause I rarely blog about our friendship and I think it'll stay that way.

By the way, Dan Gillmor is a friend too. I used to really hate his writings (back when I was a Microsoft adherent) but slowly, as Microsoft has done things to make me personally weary of its style, I've come to appreciate Dan more and more.

I think Dan really got screwed by business and technology decisions at Knight Ridder. Whoever is their CTO should be shot, in my estimation. We witnessed a horrid desecration of a good brand.

There's a whole lot of poor decision making going on in the "post bubble" Internet economy.

When Dave and I had that little talk I told him that this is what we get when we don't have competition in the publishing world.

San Jose has one newspaper. If Dan pisses off his management, where else will he work? It used to be that there was vigorous competition for "big name" journalists. I don't believe that's the case anymore.

There are 1000 people waiting in line for Dan's job (literally, that's the truth in the Bay Area -- the publishing industry here is still in a depression).

Yes, the system is broken, but that's why I love the fact that Weblogs are here.

I don't have the kind of pressures that Gillmor has on my head. That's why writing a weblog is so fun.

On this, the anniversary of D-Day, I am remembering just what an awesome responsibility freedom of the press is (and what a great gift those people who died on the beach gave me and you).

Hannah Dori Scoble was born at 3:16 p.m. today. 7 lbs 15 oz. Father (Ben) and Mother (Mary) are doing great.

Pictures coming soon (hurry up dad and post those suckers to Ofoto!)