Alec Saunders SquawkBox

My friend Jon Arnold dropped me a note yesterday about his new project, the IP Convergence TV portal.  Jon's the editor for this portal, which is a non-profit initiative that Comverse has put together. A group of charter sponsors including Intel, AudiCodes, Tilgin, BEA, Blueslice and others contribute in-kind by providing content about all the various aspects of IP convergence – IPTV, Triple Play, FMC, etc.

Check it out.  You'll see some familiar faces, including folks like Tom Howe. 

That was yesterday morning's Facebook update.  It turns out to have generated a fair amount of interest.  People wrote asking if I had blown myself up yet, commented that they had just bought a new BBQ rather than clean up the old one, and so on.  I thought about buying a new one, but my old Weber Genesis 1000 was expensive when I bought it 12 years ago (around $500), and would have been even more expensive to replace ($799 at Home Depot). Aside from some rusting parts inside, the exterior was in good shape. So I ordered up replacement burners, flavor bars, and grills from Capital Appliance & BBQ, dismantled and cleaned the BBQ, and reassembled it.

Here's the BBQ.

And here are the rotten parts I removed.  The flavour bars were so rusted that pieces had fallen into the drip pan below, and were collecting grease which causes fires.  Notice that the parts of the burners that were inside the kettle are rusted (although still pretty solid!), while the parts on the outside are like new — shiny shiny shiny!  They're nice solid pieces of stainless steel, but the traces of moisture in liquid propane cause the burners to eventually rust.

And here are the shiny new burners installed, plus new stainless flavour bars, and and stainless grills.  I decided to try the stainless bars rather than the porcelain coated, at the recommendation of the folks at Capital BBQ. 

And all put back together. 

Alec is done with rebuilding BBQ. New burners, flavor bars, grills, and a (relatively) thorough cleaning. Now VERY VERY dirty. 2:39pm

Total time — 3:00 hours.  After reassembly, it worked like new again. It's capable of heating to inferno temperatures for searing steaks, and also the gentlest of slow cooking temperatures.  Total cost to refurbish was in the neighborhood of $400 — half the price of a new Weber — and my perfectly good old barbeque hasn't been prematurely consigned to the landfill.

The toughest part about the whole job was cleaning and cleanup.  The shower was a welcome relief, but even so a day later I've still got dirt ground into my skin and fingernails. 

I dropped by Jeneane Sessum's blog (Allied) today. I haven't been there in a while. Top of the page is her decision to quit  Blogher.  Some of her previous posts, shortly after the Kathy Sierra incident, are pretty raw. 

Frankly I'm a little ashamed that I haven't spoken up earlier.  Instead of defending my friend Jeneane two weeks ago, I stayed on the sidelines.  I didn't want to get mixed up in the fight, and I still don't, really.

Some pretty horrible things were said about Kathy Sierra, including things Kathy took as death threats. Misogyny is a terrible thing.  So a lot of people rallied to her support, and condemned the folks named in her posting.  It became the virtual equivalent of a lynch mob. 

Mobs are cruel.  Mobs are irrational. Mobs rarely stop to consider the facts.

What's clear now is that the accusations made may be incorrect.  Accounts appear to have been hacked, and the malice perpetrated by anonymous hackers. 

In the aftermath, Kathy and one of the people accused, Chris Locke, went on television, and published joint statements. Tim O'Reilly proposed a bloggers code of conduct. Kathy posted again, this time about her non-blogging future, and hundreds more people wrote to support her. 

While you can't and shouldn't minimize the hurt Kathy encountered, people forget that she wasn't the only one damaged. At one point Jeneane measured the Google search count of her name associated with the phrase "death threats" at over 11,000.

What disturbs me the most is simply this — amidst the handwringing and navel gazing, people seem to have forgotten that the simplicity and accountability of a mea culpe might be the most effective and human thing to do.  Instead of blogger codes of conduct, how about beginning with the simple civility of an apology to those who were wrongly accused?