Twitter a Bad Neighbor in San Francisco?

Twitter,  a still relatively small (in business terms) company grew out of a project at a San Francisco firm,  has taken the Internet by storm with its very popular micro-blogging service.   Like many growing companies,  Twitter is need of more office space, projecting growing to a level of 3,000 employees.   San Francisco taxes businesses by a levy on payroll,  rather than the more common tax on earnings or,  as here in Washington state a tax on gross receipts.   This means that most tech companies who looked to expand a large work force would look to move out of San Francisco,  to an office park in Silicon Valley or to a completely different market outside of the Bay Area.  

Twitter however came to an agreement with the city of San Francisco under which they will lease for six years a much larger space in a vacant building only a block or so away from its current headquarters office.   In return,  San Francisco will exempt Twitter from the payroll tax for all new employees hired during the six year lease.   Twitter's neighbors complain that the gentrification will only increase rents in the area  (San Francisco is a notoriously very expensive city) and that Twitter's presence will not benefit them at all, given the tax exemption.    Seems to me San Francisco's tax policy does tend to favor smaller companies or smaller offices of large companies.    Whether San Francisco's tax break is a good deal or nor?    That's harder to call.

What do YOU think?

For more information see this article in The Seattle Times:
Twitter tax deal creates classic San Francisco row

What's Your Twitter Grade?

I am bi-polar.   I only fairly recently learned that bi-polar disorder is what is wrong with me-- although I've realized for most of my life that _something_ was wrong.    Honestly,  I've found that it is much easier to deal with my illness now that I know what it is.     I've learned that when I start on some project or game or task late at night,  become engrossed and stick with it all night and just keep plugging away at it all the next day,   this is a sure sign that I have cycled up to manic.

I mentioned awhile back my new interest in the web site Empire Avenue,   and I continue to be really hooked on this game.    One of the things I noticed on my EA profile  (I seem to almost constantly hit F5 to see if anything has changed) is that EA has tentatively assigned me a not-half-bad Twitter score.     I don't use Twitter the way most people do.    Some of the accounts I follow on Twitter are news organizations (I find the headlines that my echofon flashes in the lower right corner of my Firefox screen genuinely useful for following news) and the others are pretty much all people I have come to know,  either on various blogs and web sites or face-to-face.   And while some of my postings to Twitter are to publicize things I have written,  most of them are actual conversations with other sharp, clever people.

Anyhoo,  after having met and followed a bunch of new people after spending a night and a day hanging out on EA, Twitter, Facebook and a few other sites,   I decided to re-visit a site I've used before  Twitter Grader.  It;'s real easy to use.   Just type in a Twitter handle and hit Enter and after a brief interval the site provides you with a numeric grade,  on the 0-100 scale as well as an absolute rank  # xxx  out of the 9 million some odd Twitter users the site has graded.    My score currently is 87/100 and 1 million some odd out of 9 million some odd.    This seems pretty high to me since I have less than 300 followers.   So out of curiosity,  I ran some of the people I follow through the program and was a bit amazed that almost all of the folks I follow and talk to have scores in the high 90's and  many of them are ranked 100/100.

Honestly,  I don't really know what all this means,  yet I find it fascinating.    Do you use Twitter?  If so,  visit Twitter Grader and see what your score is.

Full Circle

Blogging has been, truly, a long strange trip for me.   I started a site on Blogspot on June 1, 2007,  largely to keep up with a couple of very long-time dear friends, whom I mostly kept up with via their blogs.  (Hi Ron!, Hi Bev!)    Since that first uncertain post,  almost four years ago now,  my life has been through so many changes, ups, downs, ins and outs that I am hardly the person I was then.    In September 2007,  I took some good advice and moved my personal journal to this site (which until very recently was at http://outofit-personal.blogspot.com) and focused my site at http://libdrone.info  much more tightly on book reviews.

Only I never really did keep up with the journal on this site.   There were a few months in 2008 when I did post fairly regularly  (and most of those posts were about how very challenging it was to produce a daily book review site) but honestly this site never made it very far up my priority list.   And that definitely shows.  (I remain in awe of my friend Bev who for more than ten years now has published a daily, 7 days a week,  journal of her life.)   I learned more than a bit about blogging and web publishing.   I learned about web site promotion.    I moved on from Blogspot to self-hosted WordPress.   Still later I moved on again to free-hosted WordPress (.com).    My health took a turn for the worse and I had to retire from the library.

Being on disability is okay.   Although under our insane health care system it requires taking a two year vacation from seeing doctors and taking pills.    I've still got 9 months to go before I will have healthcare again,  and my diabetes, blood pressure and bi-polar disorder are starting to really worry me  (untreated).   While I kind of know in theory how to create a money-making blog,   I found that putting it into practice was oh so much more difficult than I'd ever imagined.    I've found that free-lance writing is a very tough way to earn extra income.   (Lots of buyers want excellent, eloquent, "native-speaking"  English;  but they mostly want it at wages that would be so-so in rural   India,  let alone the urban United States.)  So now,  I am working on writing a book,  which I plan to self-publish.   

And I find that what I really want to do,  in addition to write books and play games online,  is get back to this personal journal.   Which has been online for nearly four years.   And which I've never really made a serious effort at.   Now that I know that I am never going to make more than pocket change for creating it;  now that I have a much better understanding of how to create, publish and promote it;  now finally I have come full circle;  to publishing on BlogSpot;   about my life and my feelings.     I don't know if I will ever have the self-discipline to post every day,  but I'm going to give it a go.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.    I welcome your comments and will endeavor to reply.

Empire Builder

First,   please note that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with the Amtrak train that travels between Chicago and Seattle.   (Though I would of course like to take that train.   Someday.)    A few days ago, my friend Tony posted something about a new social networking site he's been using.   So I clicked the link and was very soon caught up in Empire Avenue,  a new social networking aggregation site that revolves around a stock market theme.    When you sign up, you choose a ticker symbol  (mine is LIBDRONE-- go figure ;) and other users can buy shares in you.    As you sell  shares, your value increases.   Your value also increases based on your participation in social networks--  specifically Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Flickr and You Tube.

I've had a boat load of fun buying and selling shares in other people.   As most always happens,  several of my most social-networking-savvy friends are already on there  (and of course,  I bought shares in them right away) and I am meeting a bunch of fun and interesting new people.    I have a feeling that I am going to enjoy actively participating in Empire Avenue.    And I am 100% certain that talk about a virtual stock market social networking site,  really doesn't belong on the books blog.   So I decided once again to dust off my old, old personal blog,  so that I can write about what I'm mostly doing for fun online these days.     I expect that I will spend some time dusting off the old site,  adding pictures and widgets and re-listing on CMFads and Blog Catalog and other places I took it down from,  the last time I stopped updating this site.

If you haven't already,  please take a few minutes to check out Empire Avenue,  and please do buy 200 shares in me.   It doesn't cost anything to join or participate.   There are some optional added features that you can buy with real money,  but it is definitely not required,  nor necessary to have a grand old time becoming a virtual social stock market mogul.      If you do visit EA,  be sure to say hello.   I'll be happy to buy some shares in you and hope that you enjoy playing as much as I do.

To our Congressional leaders in Washington

It really just makes me want to SCREAM. For 8 years when the Demo's were a minority party they were very consistently shit upon by Repthuglicans who (irrespective of the fact that President Junior was appointed by by the Supremes and was NEVER in fact elected by the people) and they pretty much just laid there and took it, almost never filibustering or otherwise going all out to try to impeded the R's at every possible turn.

So Obama is elected with a clear mandate and the damned Dems spent their critical first year foolishly seeking bi-partisanship with R's who have been united to thwart them at every turn. Hey Nancy and Harry, STOP BEING NICE AND PLAY HARDBALL for a change. You were elected to create change and get things done and it just aint happenin for us folks down here at the bottom of the line.

It was a huge mistake, Nancy, not to begin the current two year session of Congress with a thorough criminal investigation of all the Bushit the R's pulled off during their spectacularly awful eight years. That opportunity has passed, most likely, and now the people of small towns in Massachusetts (who Already Have for themselves the benefits health care reform was to bring to the rest of the country) have thrown a monkey wrench into Harry's tortuously obtained bad compromise. (Cornhusker kickback, Ben?)

First things FIRST, eliminate the super-majority requirement to end filibusters. The first piece of legislation to pass in the Senate is the sensible proposal to change it so that while breaking a filibuster on a first vote requires 60 votes, after two days a second vote can pass with 57, after two more days 55, etc. It is ridiculous and inexcusable that a determined minority representing a small number of people can endlessly thwart the ability of the elected representatives of the majority of our population to get anything done.

Then, start over on health care and write a VERY partisan bill that can win the support of 50 Senators and phuque the Repthuglicans. If you don't, it's a sure bet that Demo's won't continue to be a majority in 2011.

By gosh, I'm a writer!

I regret that I have not posted a single update to this site in more than a month. My life is getting back to normal. I am pretty much completely over my mental health crisis. Working at the Canyon View branch has proved much slower paced and less stressful. AND, I am more than making up for the 5 hours of Sunday overtime I no longer have to work each week on free-lance writing jobs.

I posted a small classified ad on a web site and soon after heard from a gentleman in Leicester UK who is himself a free-lance writer who outsourced about ten travel articles to me. I found the work of researching and writing these pieces very easy to do. And while I only earned a penny per word on these assignments, the extra $50 was a big help. A much greater help was my client's suggestion that I look into a web site (http://rentacoder.com). And boy I'm glad I did. While many of the jobs on that site are indeed for software coders and other IT professionals there are a huge number of writing and website marketing jobs available. I sent out a couple of dozen queries and then picked up a $45 job which consisted of writing one travel article (about roller coasters believe it or not) and analyzing the site's social networking efforts and making a report with recommendations on how best to market the site through social networking.

The client seemed very pleased with my work and had tentatively agreed to hire me to work 5 hours a week (@ $15/hour) on the web site. Then two days later he sent me a message telling me that he has decided to suspend publication of his travel site but will "definitely" use me again for the two new sites he is launching. I am not holding my breath for that. BUT. Just yesterday I won a $50 job to rewrite a three page marketing white paper for a software company in Israel. Ron and I both worked on it for a bit less than an hour total between both of us. The client was very pleased with my work and I am now in discussions with him on a possible $200 project to re-write two pages of his web site.

In the old days it was so expensive to try to break into free lance writing because the only way to break end was to spend a lot of money of paper, typewriter ribbons and postage to send work off on spec to editors who most likely would only reply three months later with a thanks but no thanks postcard. By contrast I currently have 15 active bids on the RAC site and I have a feeling that a company that produces study guides for the SAT college admissions test is going to hire me for a $500 project to write 100 practice test questions for the Reading and Writing portions of the exam.

So I have been very busy with getting bids out there and corresponding via e-mail with editors and other people who need good writing done and I think it is realistic to hope that in the coming months. I have as always been reading books but have not had the time or energy to post reviews on the books blog. I am also having a little technical glitch in that I no longer seem to be able to upload pictures into my blog posts. Ron and I believe the reason for that problem is that our newish Compaq lappy remains out of service (Ron found a replacement power cord online and ordered it and we hope it will be here by Thursday) so I am struggling along on the 10 year old Toshiba lappy. Like a Timex watch this baby has taken any number of lickings and kept on ticking. (I have firmly decided the next lappy we buy will be another Toshiba; I had been reasonably pleased with the two Compaq desktops I've owned but a less than a year old lappy that goes out from a two foot drop is garbage, in my not so humble opinion.)

The other issue with updating the books blog is that I am overdue with my hosting fee and I have not wanted to IM my tech guru for help until I pay his bill, which will have to wait until around the 20th of the month when my next Rentacoder payment comes in. (Your earnings aggregate and are paid semi-monthly.) So things in the Libdrone household are back to about as normal as we ever get and I believe I will change the name of this blog back to Libdrone's Journal or some such.

So how has the past month been for you?

Saturday turned out to be

a kind of "lost day". Ron and I both got Extremely agitated Friday night and neither of us was able to sleep much. Ron spoke to "Roberta" on the phone and let her know I was Not coming in to work 'one last shift at Fakewood'. It really worries me that now they are sending me to what sounds like it is going to be Another stressful library and I begin to fear I am going to just totally lose control or end up having to retire on disability. And the main problem with that last bit is that since I have not earned much money in the last 10 quarters my disability income would not be even what I have been making at the library. What I am Hoping to do is to sign up for good short term and long term disability insurance at this year's open enrollment and then plan on going out on diability Next year when the coverage is in effect and would hopefully pay me additional disability income as well as my low social security benefit.

But Ron told me that he read my hip x-rays right along with the orthopod last week and that the x-rays clearly show Very Severe arthritis. He said when I showed the doctor how I had to get down on the floor to shelve on the bottom shelves, the man was "Shocked and Amazed" that I was able to move so well with almost NO cartilage in either hip joint. I feel sure that I could get disability for both my hips and my mental illnesses, but it would not bring in enough for us to be able to pay our bills. and honestly we are struggling and are not Really able to pay our bills as it is now. So, Ron and I have agreed that I will try very hard to begin developing an income as a free lance writer so that by the time I just physically Can't do the library job anymore we will have a real and sustainable income to live on.

I have wanted to be a free lance writer pretty much all of my life and I have to say that I feel a real thrill about having sold my writing last week (even though it was only $25) in that now I really Am a freelancer. And I am learning how to bid for jobs and making the contacts I will need in this career. I am scared, but hopeful. Staci is back in town doing more work over at Kathi's. I have been really happy to see her a few times and hope to get to spend some time with her while she is here this trip. Anyone know of any writing gigs? If you do, please give me a holler.