This is the first email I read after leaving yesterday’s talk by the Dalai Lama in Maribor. There’s voodoo at play here that I just can’t put my finger on.

Have a look and feel free to comment on any of the dirty implementation details below.

- D

“Nostalgia is good when kept in reasonable doses. i know people who never managed to break away from the past and more or less live the same lifestyle. good times, but you have to move on.”

Copied verbatim from Skype to living memory. I love the people I meet.

I’ve been ordering flowers online from the same home-town shop for about 10 years now. They’re fantastic and the results always bring a smile to my “ladies back home.” Yesterday, I was a bit surprised to find that they had introduced Youtube-style regional content blocking when I hopped on to buy some Mother’s Day flowers.  Like I said, they always managed to provide excellent bang-for-the-buck so I had no problem leaving the final choice to their discretion. “I’ll pay max $XX; you just take care of the arrangement and delivery.”

I’ve been thinking a little bit about this. It’s actually the first time where I was restricted from shopping online based on where I live. I’ve seen specific products blocked; RedBull was banned in France for example causing stress on a previous-life product and the Android market is full of stupidity in this regard; I’ve however never seen entire sites blocked. I’m hurt.

Regardless of whether or not this was intentional (and I’m inclined to believe it wasn’t), I’m just worried about how this sort of thing will evolve. Is the internet really contracting into a group of protected cells? I certainly hope not.

D

Or something like that.

Let me prefix this post by saying that generally I agree with what’s to follow. Rules are rules and such. Where I disagree is the general disdain and (apparent) inability for those with the authority to communicate with the people who, duh, pay for their right to be so condescending.

[Updates below.]

A few years back I took the liberty –as those with a capitalist slant are prone to do –to start a sole proprietorship (SP) in Slovenia. The process was poop simple: head over to the tax office, provide the necessary ingredients, set up a bank account and voila!, you’re good to go. The only odd point I encountered was that they wouldn’t accept my ever-so-English sounding “Elements” as a name. I sarcastically substituted the s with an i and was done with that xenophobic argument. I don’t earn a lot of money through the SP; enough to basically pay the (ever increasing) taxes and costs of running the business itself with the taxes involuntarily directed to the local mayor’s office –the lower case m is intentional –I digress for a later rant. Anyhow, I could do with a bit more money through the SP, but hey, it’s something.

So, today when my wife called to explain that the tax office reported I was possibly/probably going to be fined for my not having a separate/special business bank account, I was a little perturbed. I run an SP after all and all my financial data is 100% transparent because of that; I really don’t care to go through the complexities of managing multiple accounts. Furthermore, I haven’t changed anything about my practice from day one. So, why now? Why was the original establishment approved and accepted by the government, banks, accountants, etc for so many years? Why (oh why) was the relay of this latest message through some hard-toothed threat of a fine? Like I said, I’m running an SP, don’t they already know everything about me? The tax forms I receive regularly seem to say so.

Ignorance is no excuse for the law, perhaps, but the fact is, I’ve asked. The one thing that can be said about the administration in Slovenia is that for every 100 people you ask, you receive a thousand answers. It’s a rainbow of official yet 100% certain improbabilities. I won’t discuss the myriad of myths I needed to bash for immigration; there’s a guide about that I’m sure but nobody’s read it. Again, I digress.

We already saw some really nice laws put in place in the past years. Not being able to pay cash (max: 50€ then whatever the limit is now) for services/products because they don’t leave a “boogie-man’s” paper trail. The Politician’s creed is to weed out the cheaters after all. (Note: sarcasm.) Okay, I could argue this until I’m blue in the face (which perhaps explains the rules) but I simply don’t have the energy. I don’t have the energy to fight against rules that exist just to be rules; rules that are opaquely & retroactively imposed can simply bite me.

The more I look at things, the more I add up the consequences of just “making a go of it” in Slovenia, the more I am convinced that this place is being intentionally navigated into one massive cesspit. I have a hard time believing this environment isn’t being intentionally polluted and I certainly can’t see what the end-game might be for the people driving the ship. I just hope that there are people out there who are willing to stand up and do a bit more than write a stupid blog about it. You have the Slovene media. You have stupidity covered.

Anyhow, I leave you with this. I have no idea what the correlation is but it’s 100% apropos:

Update: I headed over to the tax office the next day. Was told point-blank that the tax office doesn’t care about bank accounts. Finally a bit of sense. Scratched them out above. When asked about the possibility of being fined, a grin and a small chuckle. The fact is, the accountants and the “other” administrative folks who propagate(d) this myth should “zip it”. What a zoo. In the mean time, the new bank account is looking for donations. Apply within.

Amazing.

Love it will not betray you, dismay, or enslave you.
It will set you free.
Be more like the man you were made to be.
There is a design, an alignment to cry, of my heart to see.
The beauty of love as it was made to be.

Noted as possibly the best lyric ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1PpeDRfxp4

Now I’m just wondering if I should scrap my much loved factory strategy. Who needs MyEntityFactory.listStuff() when Ebeans.find( Entity.class ).findList() is available?

Well, I’m a skeptic. Factories stay.

The call.

I clearly remember the phone call. 14 years ago today. I was sitting over an afternoon coffee with a bunch of MIT geeks — and “Dave”, who collected antique saxophones — at an office in Columbus. We were discussing the matter of my car having been stolen that morning from the secured parking lot of an insurance company. The company for whom we were all engaged and who, ironically, provided my theft insurance. The phone rang. “Dennis, come home.” Hanging up the phone, I explained the situation to the team. “Dennis, you are not lucky today.”

The winter walk wasn’t really an option.

Not having a car was sort of an issue. The irony of having worked on the system that allowed my insurance agent to say: “Sorry, I can’t accept the claim of theft on your car for at least another 2 weeks or until the police confirm it.” was not at all sweet. But I was a dog and managed to find an independent agent working late into the evening in some hideaway village who was willing to, thankfully, materialize my claim into something with four wheels.

The next bits are sort of fuzzy.

I remember the ceremony. I remember standing there in the funeral home next to him. I remember the smell. I remember his friend stopping by to give his condolences; his story about them jumping from a train with leaves of freshly farmed tobacco tucked into their shirts during the depression. I remember thinking it must have been a hard life. I remembered singing Twinkle Twinkle in his lap when I was 4. I remembered fishing; looking for worms the night before with a flashlight on freshly watered grass. I remembered being a child; I remember saying thanks after goodbye. I remember a lot of things about him but mostly I remember his unfailing character. I remember not having visited his house after he died; I spent the vast majority of my childhood there; my first home.

The thing is, all these memories reinforce the idea that a person is only someone if they can: 1/ positively influence at least one person in their life, and 2/ actively work to ensure the continuity of 1. Number 1 is easy, we’ve all done that. Number 2 takes a lot of time, effort, realization that things change, and the ability to react when they do. So, I guess what I appreciate most about my grandfather is that he was able to keep the family together (to this day) by adapting and — unless my grandmother says otherwise — silently accepting the conditions they we put upon him. No matter what the burden.

The chemistry.

All families are basically the same I suppose. There are the fools & idiots; there are the givers and there are the takers. Seeing that my family leans towards the »we laugh at everything but mostly ourselves« side, what really surprises me — and makes me the most proud of mine — is that 14 years on, we can still call us “us.” We may have lost our glue but we certainly didn’t lose our chemistry. If that’s not a testament to legacy, I’m not sure what is.

Thanks.