Over the past few years, much has been made about the harmful effects blogging or tweeting. A quick search through Google can show a myriad of “how to” articles of how to be a good blogger who doesn’t get burned because they do all these things. Then there are the cautionary tales such as the Queen of the Sky and the Phantom Professor, both who got fired from their respective jobs after their blogs and identities were discovered. Also, many prospective employer seek to vet applicants by trolling the Internet, looking to see how these people portray themselves on Facebook. Some have even gone so far as to request log-in information of job interviewees. Unfortunately, there is a lot of paranoia on this issue and it is justified.

I am tired of feeling paranoid when it comes to social networking. I do find it creepy that employers, current or prospective, would want to go through my online profiles the way one would snoop through my underwear drawer. At least with the latter, social decorum keeps most people in check. But for those who hold the resumés or one’s job in their hands, there is nothing to stop them except a lawsuit, and how many people are going to do that?

For some people, they have to consider their family, friends, and acquaintances and how they would be seen by what they share.

For a long time, especially when I was afraid of how my Facebook updates might get used against me, I went into high security panic and locked up the profile. Even though I don’t share too much information, I feared one of my opinionated status updates or some link might just be the one to get the ball rolling.

On the other hand, my Twitter profile has always been unlocked and I’ve tweeted more what I thought. Unlike my Facebook profile, I go by a pseudonym, essentially the same one I use for the blogs.

I used Shindo as a name for the ShindoTV and the Shindoverse blogs, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. I used to use my full name in the beginning when I hoped to get a history going as a writer, but I went with Shindo for a protective strategy like locking up the Facebook profile. However, all one has to do is research who holds my two domain names and they’ll find the legal name of yours truly. Also, this blog is linked to both of those accounts. Trying to hide out online is very pointless, unless one doesn’t do any activity at all.

I’ve recently made the decision to go public on Facebook. No, I’m not a corporation that is now available for more shareholders, but my updates are now for everyone to see and I’ll no doubt have more people in on my conversations. I’ve worked hard to have a persona that is smart, witty, and funny, and it’s the type of thing I want to translate on the blog in longer form.

In getting the Shindoverse out there, it hasn’t exactly gone off with a big bang, but it’s still a young blog and I’ll look at it as all the stellar matter hasn’t settled yet. While I might not change my persona name to my legal name again on this blog, I’ll approach the posts with more openness. As much as I’ve gotten tired of friends, family, and others telling me to loosen up, I’m going to take them up on this advice.

That said, I not going to talk about employers, current and prospective, or vent about work situations. That’s simply being professional.

As for making things more open, perhaps someday I will pay the price for it. If I were to follow the advice about how to be a good blogger, social networker, etc, I might have a nice, blandly inoffensive blog. No, thanks!

While I don’t have an official comments policy, ThePete has a policy that covers a lot of the issues that came up with this comment I got in my Perez post last week. ThePete didn’t agree with me and we were cool. However, there was this person, Daniel on Twitter, who felt compelled to leave this long-ass rant. Just to clarify, I don’t follow this Daniel on Twitter, but he piggy-backed on a conversation between me and a mutual friend about Perez’s use of the F word. At one point, he insulted me and I told him to frack off. From there, it felt like one of those night club arguments that seems to be over until the belligerent person confronts you at the door when you leave. With this comment, it was more like being followed to my virtual home. And, being a good host, I posted his comment, even though I thought about just deleting it without it ever seeing the light of day. Ah, but poor Daniel took so much time to type it, and I respect free speech rights.

Given that, I probably should adopt a policy similar to ThePete’s, as it’s pretty reasonable. I also find it irritating when someone tries to piggyback off my posts, which is on my blog. Exercising the right to moderate isn’t a bad thing. I’m not that desperate for comments.

I was tempted to comment on last week’s immense comment, to have fun ripping it apart, but it’s not really worth my time. As for you, Daniel, YOU REALLY NEED TO GET A BLOG. You and all the others like you. It isn’t really that hard as anyone can set one up on Blogger, WordPress, and even MySpace. You can even use Facebook‘s Notes application, which is pretty much for people who pretend to have a blog. Try it and rant to your wounded heart’s content.

My Friday night was marked by the San Diego TwineUp, a small scale local Twitter meetup with big party energy. Rob, AKA Downtown Rob, of WebWizards was generous with hosting at his downtown home (which has a fabulous south view), providing a lot of the wine, and having Rock Band set up for group fun and alternating with the iPod video playlists for ambient background noise. I’ve been to most of the TWineUps, save one, since it started, and this night’s event had the highest turnout so far. The first one had only four people, including Rob and yours truly, and this one had about 10-15 people in all. I took lots of pictures pictures and sent much of them to my Twitpic account via my iPhone. Here are some of them, along some from another camera I brought to the party and a few taken by Rich of Rich and Creamy.

Rob, Melodie, Parisa, and The Global Patriot.

Melodie and I breaking and cutting up some bread. It never hurts to bring goodies to the party. Photo by Rich and Creamy.

Dru and Jeronathon with a music video projected on the wall via Rob’s iPod playlist.

Rich on drums, Gema (Rock Band diva extraordinaire, whether she’s got the microphone or the guitar), and Dru as axe guitarist.

Tim on bass, singer unidentified, Dan Larsen on the the drums, Gema on guitar.

Jennifer Van Grove, social media entrepeneur fantastique and associate editor of Mashable.

Amanda on bass, Melodie on drums, Jennifer Van Grove on vocals, Rob on guitar. added at 10:00am.

Dan Larsen on bass, Melodie on Drums, me trying to figure out what I want to sing, Jeronathon on guitar, and Dru by balcony door. Photo by Rich and Creamy.

Rob with the lovely Parisa. Here, Rob shows he can whip up an impromptu pizza after the food’s run out. He’s ready.

Impromptu pizza goes into the oven.

I was chatting with someone or something when Rob’s impromptu pizza came out the oven. It went pretty quickly, so I was lucky to get this shot.

Rob’s got the PIMP Grail. Whoever’s near it can’t resist its power, as shown by Melodie.

Rob’s got the power! Photo by Rich and Creamy. added 10:00am

Here, Amanda has Rob in her power.

Holographic ceiling projection of stars for ambience.

The projector that makes the stars possible.

Crowd shot.

DD22 taking pictures. added at 10:00am

Eventually, the TWineUp will outgrow Rob’s pad, but this one was a nice evening had by all. Until next time.

More pics can be seen on the TWineUp page and Dru’s Flickr set of the party.

note: pictures are not in chronological order. Special thanks to Rich and Creamy for three pictures used.

During the election, he had the website, but that’s nothing special for a Presidential candidate. After that, it becomes more interesting. His campaign established a Twitter account for the candidate. After the election, during the transition period, his team then created Change.Gov to keep all of us informed. Now that the President is in office, WhiteHouse.Gov, which has been around as long as the Web itself, got an overhaul. It’s been streamlined into a more user-friendly site without sacrificing the content. Oh, and the White House now has a Twitter account.

One very new feature of the revamped website is the White House Blog. While the blogger may not be Obama himself, he or she nonetheless is someone authorized to transmit updates on his behalf. Definitely subscribe while the blog is new and the posts are few. Most importantly, stay informed.

One last interesting thing of note is that the White House has an official YouTube channel. While this is keeping up with the digital times, they’re certainly not the first government agency anywhere in the world to utilize it. The British Royal Family have broadcast addresses and informative clips from theirs for quite a while.

Following the news on then President Bu$h was an exercise in depression and anger management. Following the new administration so far is a definite joy, even with some of the hiccups. I’m staying tuned for sure.

I’ve been interacting with Chris, Brian, and Fredo through the blogosphere for the past two years, which has also taken to Twitterville (for Brian and Fredo) and Facebook. I’ve met all three of these guys in person in a one year period, and I look forward to more blog correspondence in the future.

With Joshua Minton, I found a friend who was putting forth his BFA creative writing afterlife on his blog. He put his fiction, poetry, rants, and articles out there. Actually, it was one of his articles on Every Writer’s Resource that got me in touch with him. While there isn’t a high level of blog banter and interaction going on between us, I read his Online Pulpit regularly and I have the upmost respect for him.

There are a couple of other bloggers I’ve met in that period, but those mentioned above have been a more significant part of my experience with ShindoTV and the blogosphere.

In the latter part of 2008, I started attending the local blog and Twitter meetups. On the surface, they were parties with lots of alcohol, but I’ve been making some new friends and some online contacts. One such friend is Melodie, who has shown up in some posts as a recurring character, and Rich, aka richandcreamy, who has been commenting on my blog lately. Along with developing some real time friendships, I hope to develop some good blog friendships amongs some of the local bloggers as well this year.

I’ve come across some interesting blogs out there as random people out there started following me on Twitter. Scott Campbell is a writer out in New York City with a quirky blog name, ThePete, which provides a lot of pointed commentary and discusses various projects. Another’s a more anonymous blogger, One Mean MFA, who’s currently working on the graduate creative writing degree and posts on teaching and the writing life. I’m following both of them for sure.

Then there are people I meet briefly and they move to other towns. Tamika‘s one such person and I’ve gotten to know her a bit more through all the Facebook witticisms and her blog. We’ll hang out a bit whether she visits San Diego in the future or if I head out to visit Dallas. I look forward to chatting it up in real time again, but I’m tuning in to the Gran Diva in the mean time.

I may come across some cool people to add to this community this year. Also, I hope that those I met also continue to enhance my blogging experience and I theirs. As for me, no flight plan, no problem. Here’s to seeing where this blog takes me in 2009.

This week in the San Diego Reader, I am quoted by Barbarella, the stylish blogger and columnist, in her latest entry of Diary of a Diva. She uses a snarky little tweet of mine to grab the reader’s attention in her discussion about online social networking where she compares it to the water cooler conversations at work, but with a little more control. You know, those conversations we all love to have on Facebook, Twitter, and even MySpace. Often, when people ask those of us who use social networking what they are about, we’re often hard pressed to explain, especially when it comes to Twitter, and Barbarella does take some time to explore that issue.

Barbarella, I enjoy your stories and your witty contributions to the online conversation. Thanks for the quote.

I joined a Facebook discussion group No Rick Warren at Obama Inauguration and I got a response was from a good friend of mine, an evangelical Christian, who wondered what my personal beef was with Rick Warren. To his credit, he and his wife took some flack from people they knew for voting for Obama and voting against Props 4 & 8. I sent him a response saying we can agree to disagree and these were my reasons:

I’m not at ease with Warren’s gentler rhetoric about GLBT issues. He certainly showed his loved towards “sinners, not the sin” with support for Prop 8.

If Obama was insistent on getting an evangelical pastor for this invocation, couldn’t he have gotten Brian McLaren?

Thankfully, a unifying opinion on Warren is not the basis for our friendship (which would be in trouble if it were). There is room to talk about him and the issues he represents.

Given that, I don’t have a soft opinion on Warren right now. I think it’s great that Melissa Etheridge is having a dialogue with Rick Warren. She is someone who has a lot at stake with this whole Prop 8 issue, so she’s a better person than I can be right now. I’m just not there.

I haven’t been a good gay blogger by editorializing on how Rick Warren is so innapropriate for Obama’s inauguration (which is my opinion). All I’ve been doing was doing things here and there on the Facebook feed such as joining that group and posting links to a Rachel Maddow commentary and an SF Gate editorial appropriately entitled The Purpose-driven Bigot. That, and I posted a tweet on Twitter. Given that people seem to pay more attention to my Facebook feed than my blog, I was asking for it.

I’m not going to post the message in its entirety. I’m only going to give a brief summary of a message I got from someone else and try to answer it.

1. The media coverage of Rick Warren and what he said is wrong.
2. I’m calling someone a bigot based on inaccurate reporting.
3. I know nothing about Rick Warren.
4. I should read his book or attend a few services to form a fair and balanced opinion of him.

The media coverage of Rick Warren and what he said is wrong.
This guy just loves to talk and talk and talk, so he provides a lot of the ammo for the media, whether it’s kooky creationist spiels or his candy coated rhetoric on the gay issue. It’s great he does stand for some social justice issues, but he has become an accomplice to some injustices such as his 11th hour endorsement of Prop 8:

I’m calling someone a bigot based on inaccurate reporting.
This cliché is still pretty useful: If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, it is a duck. Likewise, if is someone walks like a bigot and talks like a bigot, they are a bigot. Many conservative fundamentalist activists, such as James Dobson, have taken on a harsh, aggressive tone to their homophobia. While he is not as severe as Fred Phelps, Dobson is actively engaged in a culture war where gays are one of many enemies, but important enough to garner significant attention. The harshness of his rhetoric shows through his psychobabble. Warren’s trickier because he sugarcoats his rhetoric and he uses the language of reconciliation. Even though he comes across as more enlightened than Dobson, he holds very similar views.

I know nothing about Rick Warren.
Touché. Given that, he is a public figure with significant amount of media attention prior to this whole Obama fiasco. There have been numerous articles, blog entries, YouTube excerpts of his sermons, and even a lovely Wikipedia entry I can glean to get information about him. I can also go directly to his website and see how he and his webmaster like to portray the Rick Warren persona. Oh, I think Ricky Gervais would make a perfect Rick Warren if Hollywood ever decides to do a biopic.

I should read his book or attend a few services to form a fair and balanced opinion of him.
Those are some excellent suggestions. While it may be this person’s hope that my mind would be changed by reading Warren’s work or hearing his sermons, the opposite effect could happen. I could wind up gaining first hand, concrete evidence for Warren’s positions that I find abhorrent. In all honesty, I don’t want to spend money to get the book. If I could check it out from the public library or borrow a friend’s copy, I might consider it. There’s also the issue of time, and I’d much rather spend that time reading something else. As for the sermons, driving outside of San Diego county just to hear him speak is a terrible waste of gas and travel time. I’ve been there, done that with the mega-churches and I don’t want to go there again.

Yes, Warren is nice to gay people. Despite some unsavory opinions, he’s happy to have dinners with them and dialogue with them. This is good, but he doesn’t really feel it’s right to be gay, even in commited relationships. He is like those who first condemn gays for fucking around and not being capable of committed relationships while cutting off the means for them to cultivate meaningful, stable unions. One thing that I don’t care for is that Warren is a proponent of ex-gay ministries. He and Saddleback welcomes gays, but only on his terms. Hopefully, Melissa Etheridge and some others could get him to reconsider, but I don’t know…

There is never a dull moment whenever I hang out with Melodie. For her birthday, something completely unexpected happened – her chocolate fondue caught on fire!

Melodie was after an interactive kind of dining experience – one where the everyone was active participants in cooking the dinner, so something like the Turf Club or the Strip Club sounded good or even Benihana. Fondue fit the concept nicely, so Fondue Fusion & Bistro, formerly known as Forever Fondue, seemed like a perfect choice.

Saturday night was her birthday, and a lot of Melodie’s friends showed up, including some mutual friends of ours Gema and Rob, also known as Downtown Rob. We know each other through Twitterville, but several of Melodie’s other friends know her through other contexts, such as work and yoga classes. I got to talk to some of them as I was seated at the other table.

The owner obviously loves Picasso, as there were reproductions of his work on every wall. However, Gema found the display of a Guernica print very disquieting. Perhaps the owner didn’t think through the effects the painting may have had on the diners. However, the lack of thoughtfulness didn’t seem to end there.

The menu itself was bewildering, especially the fondue combinations. It took the waiter several times to explain to all of us how the combos (or All Inclusives, as they were called) worked, and even then we were all confused.

I found the booths to be very cramped, but I’m a very big guy. Thankfully, there were a few chairs at my table.

To a minor digression from my mini-rant: Drink Porn. These martinis were very lovely.

Rob wanted to get a signature shot of him holding a martini, so here it is. In the short time I’ve known him, I can tell lots of stories. He’s that colorful a person. He’s also very fun to party with, which is a source of all those stories.

In spite of my earlier complaints, the food was actually very good. My newfound friend and I got to enjoy Queso Fiesta, which consisted of beer, Wisconsin Cheddar, and some jalepeños. There was plenty of sourdough bread, apples, and vegetables for dipping. Then there were the salads, which were satisfying, but were too much. Then, the main course, which consisted of meats and vegetables to be cooked in broth were delicious and easy to cook.

Some more cheese fondue. Yum!

Here is the birthday girl enjoying some of her fondue.

While waiting for the broths to boil, it was was fun to watch the vegetable broth. With the vegetables swirling about, it looked as if there were tiny fish swimming around.

The dessert fondues were also wonderful. My neighbor and I ordered the same items for our inclusives, so we got a chocolate and Irish creme sauce. Melodie’s was simply a chocolate fondue. How it caught on fire I don’t know, but our friend Rich poured something on it to get it to burn brighter. It took a few clicks to get it right, but I finally wound up with the intense photo at the top of the entry.

Overall, a very good time was had by all despite whatever confusion occured. I even got a pleasant surprise in the end. In the tab shared by me and my neighbor, we expected to pay $37 each for our All Inclusive. We were only charged for one, so it was cheaper for both of us. After that, a few of us went out for drinks and karaoke.

While Facebook, Flickr, and even Twitter don’t even come close to the same level of evil and sliminess of Helium, one isn’t necessarily safe.

I suppose I’m not completely safe regarding the web service I’m hosted with, but if they ever decided they wanted to eject me, I’d still have my files. I can always move on to another service and keep posting. Also, I don’t have to worry about if I forfeited ownership to my own material. Nonetheless, back up.

I’ve already had a variety of topics I’ve been doing before I tried to move in the direction of the fiction blog. I figure it’s best to return to that, but how do I come up with a soundbyte answer to describe ShindoTV? I’ve never been good with the short, condensed answer that says it all, especially if a reporter had a microphone shoved in my face. The best answer I can think of right now is that is is my online magazine. It’s in the name too, so this is my broadcast.

Thank you for tuning in to ShindoTV.

The benefit of the Twineup is that there is more of opportunity to meet and get to know fellow Twitterers, which is present at the Tweetup, but there are fewer people with a less hectic party pace. And, there is nothing like some wine and cheese to help the conversations get going, very good ones indeed.

The Twineup eventually migrated to Altitude, which had an excellent view of Petco Park’s baseball diamond. We eventually met up with @MyMelodie, who was with her friend @jenniferaron. At one point, several of us couldn’t resist doing a runway walk, which was only a small part of the crazy fun post-wine.

A special thanks to Rob for his hospitality and for creating the event. As I’ve mentioned before, Rob is a big part of the San Diego online community, helping to organize the Blogger Meetups and recently co-sponsoring last week’s SDTweetup. His internet server business, Webwizards.Net, has a special 60 day trial plan available to Twitterers. Check it out and make your grand presence known beyond Twitterville.

The next SDTwineup is on October 24, 7pm.