The Blair Chronicles

Archives-- February 2004

02.16.04

I had the most intriguing thought today. Almost brilliant other than the fact that it's so simple, there's no way that it could be brilliant and I like that because it fits my style just perfectly, let's call the thought near borderline brilliance. And it has everything to do with what I'm about to tell you. It's so close to sheer ig'nerts, that it gives me the willies! Anyway, have you ever heard someone say "there's always two sides to the story?" Oh yeah, over and over and over. But in almost every case of the story, if you think about it, is the idea that both sides represent a certain personal reality that presents itself as "the truth" when it may fall short of being near to any truth. So in a sense, "two sides of a story" is really a juxtaposition of two half truths, one or the other of the two realities being so close but yet so far, from the real truth. Which one is closer or further from the truth or to reality remains seemingly in the eyes of the beholder and the believer. It's just like the gray area between brilliance and ignorance, something so amazingly stupid channeled in the right direction and within the right audience becomes a brilliant idea. Get it?

That's what happened today, it was "two sides of the story" day. Like my thoughts were split into two distinct categories of thought. One thought category had "my side" of the thinking and the other category had the 'other side" of the thinking. And then I realized how funny they both were in terms of the truth because I could relate to both. Of course I wanted to lend all the credibility to my side as being the truth when in deed I knew the other side would feel equally so about their truth. You see? What's intriguing is the fact that there are two sides to every story, for sure, but there is only one truth. This plays out everyday on the TV, radio and in print. It's the struggle in your mind between right and wrong when you watch the news, listen to the radio, read the article or discuss any given topic with your coworker or friend. Not necessarily a good or bad struggle, just a tug-o-war of ideas, the type that make conversations interesting.

Take for example the conversations going on across the world about whether or not the USA should have primitively initiated the war in Iraq. Who is right and who is wrong and what is the real truth. Another good example is the apparent struggle going on between the people who like doing business with company A and those that hate company A. Or, those who like one person and those that do not. It's like everything in our world can, in its purest form, be whittled down to this idea of "two sided" thinking. And then there's the real truth, the reality. What is the real truth anyway? Who in terms of what reality is actually correct? Good questions to think about.

02.08.04

I spent most of the day retro-fitting html code on PMC back to PayPal.com to process credit cards. I had converted it to 2Checkout.com recently and it took two weeks or so to get the job done, meaning, make the change and give it time to work, fix problems and get use to the new system. The end result was not good, 2CO was just too complex and hard to work with. In three years PayPal never gave me an ounce of trouble so, tried and true prevails.

In the midst of this change I discovered Google.com changed it's algorithm for placing websites and PMC moved from #1 on the first page of results to the second page, coming in around 12 or so in the rankings. This was not good. My sales have been way down and I would guess it's because of the placement. Not the conversion to 2CO, which I thought originally. I'm still much happier to be back with PayPal and the bookwork will be much easier which in turn, will take a load off. That's a good deal in one way. More time to pursue what's more important, rather than coding. In another way, it struck me, it's time to move on to bigger and better things.

I have a genuine interest in how e-commerce works, been talking about it for several weeks, here and there. Well, I think it's time to take my thoughts and ideas and move them from the back burner to the front burner. I'll be concentrating on e-commerce research and using it to develop two areas I want to work in. One area is writing, so, I plan on documenting the roads I travel during the research. The other area I plan on developing is a simple system for anyone wanting to sell goods on the net. My experience with doing so over the last several years has been painfully complicated. I want to change that and make it easy for folks. And that's about the size of it for now.