Dear diary, I'm wondering what has happened to you my diary.
Last year I ventured inside the walls of kingdom kos and like any newbie I jumped back out and said whoa. My diary you didn't grab me, in fact you scared me.
Kos is a scary place for those unfamiliar with the system. Myself, I come from the forums of Democraticunderground. Forums I understand with the indexing and classification systems. Want to read about Israel then drop into the Israel/Palestine forum and browse the posts from the last 48 or 72 hours. I also have my own Wordpress Blog at Partizane.com which with syndication has really just become a cross post of my Kos writings along with other's I respect.
But dKos, dear diary, is not a blog in the true sense. Yeah, it is if one looks at the user pages and if you frequent particular bloggers. But the front page system with the recommend list and the latest list create a very non-blog atmosphere. dKos is really just a race. Maybe, diary, we should call this place a Race Blog. (And dear reader if you just thought I meant race in the other sense then you need to look inside yourself).
dKos is a race to the top of the rec page where the quality of the idea, the knowledge of the writer takes second place to how many friends you can attract to get you on the rec list. Then, dearest diary, these people, these bloggers have pseudo conversations within the comment trees. Most of the conversations being of the he said, she said, my daddy's bigger than your daddy kind of worthless waste of valuable bandwidth.
Yes, my diary, I do care about bandwidth. That thing most people don't get and really don't need to understand. To me, bandwidth is Gold. It is the petroleum of the Internet. In the real world, and I know there's an acronym but I've never learned those. In my life I build, maintain and manage a huge cluster of servers, actually serving video content to our customers all over the world. In my world every k of bandwidth means something, costs something and I can only laugh as I think that each character I type is generally 2 bytes. 2 bytes out of the bandwidth of the internet. 2 bytes of waste. An environmentalist does not like waste.
But Diary, I wonder what happened to you.
When I finally took the time to learn the ways of kingdom kos, or in reality Scoop. When I finally understood about getting an account, waiting a bit, learning to comment and eventually having the right to post. When I finally wrote a diary it was good.
I began last year writing field diaries about my experience as a volunteer with the Clinton campaign in my State of NH. At first I didn't know that's what I was writing but a kossack one day asked me to keep writing the field diaries, and I did.
I wrote about why I won't forget what the republican's have done.
I wrote a few times about canvassing in the New England fall weather.
I wrote about being quoted on the front page of the Boston Globe
I wrote about meeting Hill and Bill and I wrote many times about the wonderful life of a political junkie in the Great State of New Hampshire.
I wrote about meeting the strippers of Vegas who told me why they registered to vote and I wrote about those days leading up to and including election day.
Some days, my diary asked me to write about others, to maybe help a cause.
I was impressed with this place and the discourse, you dear diary could bring my way. Throughout the early campaign there was true camaraderie here. We were Democrats supporting Democrats and more often than not an Edwards or a Kucinich supporter, well maybe not Dennis supporters. But supporters of Joe and Chris and others would engage me in discussions of issues. Quality discourse on the future of our country.
But the Race to the top demanded more. As the candidates dropped out, the level of discourse went down until we have this shell of the old community. The Kingdom of Kos is no more and I am as guilty as anyone for helping to pull down the walls.
More and more dear diary, you became what the Daily Race demanded. Or maybe what I wanted you to become. Campaign experiences became candidate diaries. Candidate diaries became anti-candidate diaries.
I used to laugh at the people who's life is so boring that they have nothing better to do than to troll around for diaries to ruin. And then I began to engage them, but not much because I still can't see wasting good bandwidth on useless comments. Lately and most likely again tonight, I've been publishing diaries and never commenting within them. Watching the frustration is a kick but my diary I think you are telling me that I should not be the cause of all that wasted bandwidth.
What happened to you dear diary? Why did you my friend become a book I want to close?
No this isn't one of those goodbye diaries. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Rather I think I'm going to close this book for a bit and just sit back for a few days or weeks. Perhaps I'll catch up on my reading.
Dark Tower 7 is demanding that I pick it up again and answer some nagging questions. Number one being, are there any hints to what Roland experiences as he once again leaves the ..........