I guess Joe Crawford really liked the email submission I sent him containing my post about the Chargers, the stadium issue, and its impact on our community, because he gave me posting privileges at sandiegoblog.com. Regardless of how many others he’s given posting abilities to, I consider it a real honor. It also means, of course, that I have to start writing more about living in San Diego, which inevitably means writing more about local politics. Hopefully it will make up for the frustration that I felt after being caught by a local news team, fastidiously pressed reporter, microphone, camera and sound crew and all, in front of my local Albertsons just after the news broke about the city’s pension scandal and attendant financial morass, and demurring from giving tv-ready quotes because I hadn’t properly assessed the information and considered its implications.

It is also a great opportunity for me to expand the readership of my blog, if I want to follow that path. In the blogging world, politics is the equivalent of Internet porn. But, I guess, it’s a reflection of my interests and leanings that I even think such a thing. I’m sure there are plenty of power bloggers out there that never talk about politics – in fact, I religiously read one – Wil Wheaton. And there’s the namesake poet who has an enviable PageRank, even if, in my philistine perspective, his poetry is crap. But all I see referenced in Newsweek are the political ones – oops, my bias is showing again. I don’t know if it’s ironic or revealing that most of my traffic is generated by my technical posts, but politics is my guilty pleasure.

I’ve wandered a bit from my original topic, but I guess there’s one thing I want to be made clear – I’m proud to call myself a San Diegan.

Posted by Greg as My Website, Politics, Posts About Me, Society at 21:22 PST

2 Comments »

Ever since confronting the Union Tribune’s foreboding headline today, I’d like to point out that whether the San Diego Chargers are going to leave our town is an issue that ought to get the juices flowing in all concerned locals, and that SD bloggers really ought to be posting their thoughts about it. Personally, there is no way to express the dismay I feel at the idea of losing the Chargers, especially since they appear to be in an effective (if sometimes stumbling) team-building mode that could make them one of the power players, and quite possibly a dynasty, in the NFL. I know a lot of people are still hurting about the Padres rip-off – how they parlayed a single year’s World Series bid into a taxpayer-financed treasury raid for a new stadium and then traded off their power players – but we stand to lose a lot if we let the Chargers go.

This issue embodies a lot of things that can get people worked up – local politics, incompetence, muckraking district attorneys, and even corruption that have lead us to be called “Enron-by-the-Sea“; environmental issues (who let those tanks farms leak all that stuff into our soil, and in South California?); sports, and the corollary – are sports too violent; public finances, or the lack thereof; and the national and international identity of a community that is seen by many as living in paradise, a cutting edge technological powerhouse, an overinflated real estate market headed for a bursting bubble, a place hurt by a confluence of non-locals, and even the drug-trafficking Miami of the Left Coast! Who could turn from sinking their teeth into such a juicy issue and the fallout, whether from jealousy (I walked the dog last night, in the middle of January, in a t-shirt and shorts) or pride?

I issue a call to arms for all San Diego bloggers – write what you think, criticize the others’ opinions, and most importantly, link and trackback to them!

Posted by Greg as Current Events, Football, Politics, Society at 18:47 PST

3 Comments »

Since I subscribe to the RSS feed of the San Diego Blog, I’ve seen that they’re planning a get-together of local bloggers. I’d really like to go, but I don’t know if I could make a evening social hour (or three.) But then I saw that they are holding a lunchtime meet as well, so I signed up.

While posting my RSVP comment, I thought of how the old San Diego Connection BBS used to have regular meets, and tossed in a comment asking if any old SDC members would be there. It seems an excellent opportunity to catch up with old friends after the Internet killed the idea of local BBS groups socializing online. Not-so-incidentally, it was how I met my wife, Raquel, or Sinamon as she was known then.

That comment lead me to wonder, in that hyperlinking non-linear thinking way, whether there was a way to hook up with old SDC’ers, and a quick search found plenty of links, even a user at SlashDot. I wasted time I don’t have to look at a few of them and even registered at one BBS nostalgia site, even though only one old member of SDC was signed up there as well. But it occurred to me that if I wanted to find them, it would behoove me to be able to be found – and thus this post. Google should have it indexed within a couple of days.

If you were also a member of SDC and would like to get in touch with me, my contact information is posted at this blog. I’d love to hear from you. I was Mate, and I can’t for the life of me remember my user number, but is was in the 1200′s and I got plenty of comments from other users about the former owner of the number, who must have been a particularly kinky female (it was an adults-only site.) I wasn’t a significant influence at SDC – unless you count the fact that I sort of sneaked in there and walked off with the hottest chick in the place. Sinamon and I were also pretty good friends with Twin Peaks – a real mover and shaker, who used to host some pretty hot SDC parties at her home. There’s no easy way to put this, but Debi passed away a couple of years ago from what I believe was a complication from the bariatric surgery that ended her signature largeness and changed her life completely. We still miss her.

Posted by Greg as Posts About Me at 17:46 PST

4 Comments »