About TIB
To help you navigate:
About The Site
Intro
T I B is an amalgam of two other blogs: Ellipses… and CJ’s Mind Garden. Managing not only the content, but the various affiliates and analytics became more time consuming than it needed to be; so, both sites were merged. This site contains both a personal blog as well as an opinion blog. It should be interesting to see how they mesh over time.
I do encourage you to sign up for T I B. While it probably won’t mean much in the early stages, as T I B evolves being a member will provide a means for me to get in touch with you about some of that fun members-benefit content that a lot of blogs are famous for.
The Obligatory Privacy Policy Stuff
I have no need to share the information you give at registration other than for the purpose of getting in touch with you about T I B. If you want to be removed, just let me know.
T I B does have advertisers to help defray some of the expenses of this site. When you click on an ad, you are taken to wherever the advertiser takes you. It’s pretty much out of my hands. Whatever information you give them is not shared with me. Here’s some Google-y stuff:
About Google and the DoubleClick DART cookie:
- Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on your site.
- Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet.
- Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
Hopefully that covers the necessary stuff.
Other Stuff
Just because there is one primary author doesn’t mean that new ideas and viewpoints aren’t appreciated. Please feel free to comment on any of the blogs that are posted. If you have any article ideas about things you’d like to see, please don’t be shy about contacting me.
Because I expect conversations to be civil and at least tangentially relevant, I (or designated moderator(s)) reserve the right to (but not necessarily limited to) moving, deleting, redacting, etc. comments, forum posts, etc. without warning. Also, by posting here you grant me and the site the rights necessary to store the data (necessary as this is a web site and data is, you know, stored), copy it for backups as well as in ways required by the mechanisms/programming that allow this site and its applications to function, transmit the information of your posts so that others can see it subject to privacy flags and restrictions (again, this is just necessary network stuff…). You also accept the fact that the global network has a persistent memory. I have no control over what others might copy, cache, archive, or otherwise do with publicly accessible data.
I should note that even though this is a U.S.-based site, I figure I should practice what I preach; therefore, I’ve decided to make metric my standard system of measures. I’m not planning to retroactively update old posts (earlier than Feb. 21, 2009). I also don’t guarantee I won’t make mistakes, especially with temperature (old habits die hard). Where conversion is important, inch-pound measures will be included in parentheses.
Browser Issues
In this update you might encounter browser issues because of some of the choices I’ve made about sticking with CSS standards as much as possible. This means that users of IE6 and earlier (especially) are likely to see some formatting problems. If you are unable to upgrade your version of IE to version 7 or greater, then I strongly encourage you to download and install the latest version of Firefox (my preference, and one I encourage in any case) or Opera or any other more-or-less standards complaint browser.
I apologize for any inconvenience that this causes, but honestly, for web coders, IE has been the bane of our existence with all the special circumstances that have to be taken into account. Now that there is a version out that pretty much works, I’m abandoning the broken versions.
Point of trivia: this isn’t the first time something like this has come up. The change from Mozilla to IE as a standard. Then the change from tag option to CSS styles. What can I say? It’s the modern world. Change is the constant.
About CJ
This is for all of you who just don’t have the time to sift through the pile of blog entries to piece together the relevant bits and pieces of your primary author’s bio. So, here’s a quick summation (as opposed to those snail-paced summations that you get elsewhere).
First off, I guess I should mention that I have a love of knowledge as well as the application of that knowledge. That I hold a Bachelor of General Studies degree from the University of Maryland, College Park pretty much broadcasts that my fields of interest are broad, indeed. For the curious, my main areas of study were: Computer Science, Psychology, Sports (from being a trainer to sports law), Astronomy, and English. The years have shown that I can pretty much hold my own in most fields…except botany, for some reason (my mind just doesn’t latch on to botany; but to be fair, I haven’t applied a great deal of effort to overcome that personal limitation).
It should also be noted that I’m not above a little rabble rousing from time to time. It’s my feeling that the rabble need the occasional rousing from their complacency to make things interesting. Play devil’s advocate? Sure. Thinking outside of the box? I see that as too limiting…we need to question if the box is the proper catalyst for thought regardless if it’s inside or outside.
My career choices have mostly revolved four areas: computers, writing, photography, and art—though I’ve been known to mentor from time-to-time as well. I’ve pretty much retired from doing anything as a computer professional. I’ve been actively acquainted with computers for 40+ years now. I’ve been immersed in the field as a student and professional for 30+ years. Now, I just play around with them for fun and I’ll help out family and very close friends when they need a tech. The other three vocations are still current and being actively engaged in. I will admit that when push comes to shove and I have to label myself as just one thing, it’s as a writer.
As my constant overlap in studies and careers for the past three decades has shown, I’m always wanting to be interdisciplinary. I guess since I was raised to be one of those pesky east-coast intellectuals (though I deigned to adopt sufficient pomposity to fully matriculate into that ivory edifice), that sort of figures.
Politically I’m an independent moderate. I evaluate prospective and current representatives individually and don’t cloak myself in the ease of dogma. Though I like my beliefs, I’m willing to change them if I’m shown to be in error. I expect the same from my elected officials. I do not damn people for honestly standing by their own informed convictions (whether or not I agree), but I will if they simply spout the convictions of others out of expediency or active ignorance.
And lastly…I like doing stuff that makes me smile. To that end, I’m very much a smart-ass. But—as people have been kind enough to acknowledge—while my attempts at humor might sometimes miss their mark, two things have always been certain: I don’t act out of malice; and I listen to every word you say—if I didn’t, I couldn’t twist your words around so often with the intent to elicit a smile.
And that’s the quick summation. For more information, read the blogs. I’m in there.
CJ
