Questions and Answers In Lieu of Content.

Content-type thing, with participation aspect. Procedure:

1)Leave comment indicating you would like questions to be asked of you. (Original text: "Hit me.") Five questions, perhaps in getting to knwo you better or just random questions available style, will be posed.

2)Answers are requested to questions. In comment thread, or -

2b)in posting of your own, answering questions and perpetuating game to make an answerer an asker.

Participation optional, reposting optional, but hopefully, fairly interesting. Also, if you have questiosn to ask fo me, do so in comments, please.

Answers from questions asked of me by quoththeravyn

1. How many tabs do you typically have open? I imagine you making your news-link posts by collecting tabs you left open because they were interesting. True? Or how do you do it?
   
   Typically, my tab-count across the many browser sessions I have open at any given time is probably 50 or more. Most of them are intermittently-checked, or are one-time items, opened to read a news story or to think about it more. In terms of a core group, I can probably pare it down to about 20-25 of those places I regularly check.
   
   As for making news posts, well, usually I run through a set procedure of places and aggregations, click on what's interesting or a continuing story, and then post links with pithy commentary on the matter (sometimes longer-form if someone has irritated me or is otherwise Wrong On The Internet sufficiently to require a bigger response.)
   
   My greatest source for interesting material is my reading circle / friends list, as most actual news websites can be dry, boring, and interested in things they really shouldn't be.



2. What are your favorite newsy-type websites to follow?
   
   I don't follow all that many news-y type website for the reason stated above - they tend to follow unimportatnt things or make other things out of control. Although I do tend to use The MaddowBlog for when I really need to sift the wheat on an issue that the circle/friendslist hasn't picked up on. There's occasional stops at places like DailyKos and HuffPo, but since one of my regular sources of material is decidedly conservative-leaning (and a hat tip to QuickNEWS for the work they do in maintaining that roundup), I'm just as often hanging about the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, or opinionated places like PatriotPost and Townhall, where much of the material of the dogmatic conservative appears.



3. Do you have a background in journalism? How would you describe your biases?
   
   No background in journalism at all. Just some nutter with a blog, who decided to organize what he saw to hide that he really hasn't got anything interesting in his personal life or any creative ambitions to write about. I'm probably not even up to the level of hack in terms of requisite professionalism or actual effectiveness. As for my biases, the warning We Are Not Unbiased is a drumbeat, and it generally leans leftward. Sometimes harder than others, which often produces criticism of both centre-right political parties that the United States pretends are the bounds of acceptable discourse. An actual leftist in charge would do the country good.
   
   So I won't be winning any Fox News awards any time soon, shall we say.



4. Enough about news. How many stuffed toys do you have?
   
   ... about 27, at last count, which is a quite respectable amount of material, across various gamuts of chocobos, Pokemon, some dragons, and two of the guys in clean suits that danced when Intel introduced the Pentium II chip (whaddya mean, old...)



5. Tell me something quantitative about yourself (besides the stuffed animal count).
   
   A large amount of my life is not really quantifiable...and the ones that are aren't ones that I want to mention, as most of them involve debt-to-income ratios. I suppose I could mention my age. Or how long I've been working at a great job. Or how many posts I've made, comments received, and other statistical measures, but I think I'll just mention a set of numbers.
   
   7, 8, 9. Look at them on any scorekeepers sheet for baseball or softball, and they'll tell you where I spent a lot of my summer baseball time. Especially 9. At the time, of course, when you're in those positions in summer ball, the fight is not between you and the batter, it's between you and your boredom. (In social co-rec softball games, the same applies - one set of hitters will always hit it over your head, the other set will hit it on the ground or not sufficiently far to involve you.) There are occasional flashes of brilliance and action when you're out in the 7-8-9 positions, but they're generally pretty few and far between. Which makes it your dream to get up into the 1-6 positions, so that you don't just trot out, watch the action, and then trot back.
   
   With time, getting to talk to the coaches who put me there on occasion, althoguh indirectly, through my parents who were supporting us all, they always said that I was in the 7-8-9 positions because they could count on me not to lose the fight with boredom and because when the action came my way, I would be ready for it and know what to do with the ball once I had it. At least one time in my momory, playing position 8, the batter hit a fly ball out to where I was. I caught the ball and threw it back in to the waiting fielder on the base, getting a second out because the runner was still getting back to the base. At the time, it seemed like it was a closer play than it was to the observers, who later told me that the runner was still standing there processing that the ball had actually been caught. The second out from that play, I was told, was because I knew what to do with the ball when I had it, and I didn't have to be told where to throw.
   
   Where I am in life right now seems more like playing in the 7-8-9 positions - trot out, watch the action, worry about whether or not we have enough runs on the board to win the game, support the other positions, trot back in, wait to see whether I get to hit this inning or not. From my perspective, it certainly doesn't seem like I'm contributing much to the team - mostly because the ball hasn't been hit my way in any sort of spectacular way. I'm sure that I fielded more than a few routine ground balls, but it's the double-plays or the time when you chased down a fly that was hit over your head that you remember. And with the work and the life that you have, it's sometimes tough-to-impossible to recognize the impact you have on someone else. In my line of work, I might inspire lifelong readers, or people who decide to take on the library profession because of the great experience they had with me as a child or a teenager. I could provide the critical resource that helps a writer finish their Great American Novel, or the long-term unemployed worker get back to work. I could be the person who helps someone realize they're not alone in the world and shifts them off a course of self-destructive action. The problem is, if I've done it, or when I do it, I probably won't ever know. (Although the thank-you cards from the students are darn cute.)
   
   So I guess I'm asking you to let your inspirations know that they inspired you, if you still can. Even for those of us who are actually playing positions 1-6, it can feel like 7-9.