Archive for the ‘dablog’ Category

15 Thoughts on 15 Years of Blogging Under the Fedora. Thoughts 6 to 10 …The Glory Days…

Posted: December 1, 2023 by datechguy in blogs, dablog
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Part one of this post: In the Beginning is here.

I mentioned how Robert Stacy McCain made a huge difference in my life. That came from this post titled “Send DaTechGuy to CPAC” :

Before I left Massachusetts a week ago, I told him that if he’d create a PayPal account, I’d make sure the tip-jar hitters sent him to CPAC. He said, “I need $800 a week, plus expenses.” And today, I noticed he’d created the “Do It Myself Fund.”

To the shock of everyone including me the money came in and I attended what would be the 1st of many CPACS during the 2010’s

At CPAC 2010 I created a Youtube account for the videos I shot. It began with this interview of Steve Eggleston of No Runny Eggs.

This would eventually become DaTechGuy’s Field Guide to Bloggers. Some like Nice Deb who have gone on to bigger things, Some like the Lonely Conservative who would put me up when covering events in NY. And some who have become huge names like Dana Loesch, Kurt Schlichter and Professor William Jacobson.

All this became ten years of videos and interviews from covering events that were a big deal on youtube until a year ago but that’s a story for part 3.

The Trip to CPAC was the catalyst but the thing that pushed me over the line was April 14th in Boston MA when the Tea Party Express came to town for a rally. I decided to go and cover it getting video like this of Sarah Palin taking the stage

and plenty of great photos But the real shock was that I found myself I was invited onto the bus heading for the DC rally and decided to accept with only the clothes on my back, a laptop in need of a charge, no place to stay in DC just the credit cards in my wallet. It was a leap of faith and what a leap it was.

It was during the course of this bus trip that I bought my first flip phone (Standing behind Victoria Jackson in line at the Radio Shack) which was used to call DaWife and tell her where I was and what I was doing. She was not pleased.

This Trip however was the trip that made me as a blogger. I interviewed Byron York who was the 1st member of the MSM I ever encountered who had heard of me.

I interviewed Tucker Carlson, I interviewed Andrew Breitbart for the 1st time and most importantly interviewed Clara Csiong who having fled the communists in China & Cubs saw what was coming today more clearly than anyone else

When Glenn Reynolds instalanched my tipjar shake to cover the expenses of this unscheduled trip I decided to see if I could make a living blogging.

It would all become a whirl. It led to a radio gig, DaTechGuy on DaRadio on WCRN Worcester and then syndicated on stations in the Money Matters Radio network. I would write for the examiner and pick up other writing gigs making a few bucks here and there.

But the real deal came as I earned my catchphrase: “Have fedora will travel” by the grace of my readers. I who had not even been on a commercial flight since my honeymoon would thanks to the generosity of my readers travel across the country. I would fly to Arizona, Colorado and Georgia to cover campaigns. I would drive with Stacy McCain through 7 states covering the big red wave of 2010. CPAC 2010 became CPAC 2011 and more. The tip jar hits and the interviews with people like Steve Bannon before the Trump years when he was a CPAC outcast , Pam Geller and Robert Spencer who were warning the world of the things we are now seeing kept coming. And during Weinergate I would have one of my blog posts appear as a column in the New York Post and lead to an appearance on the local Fox Station in Boston.

I would cover the 2012 and 2016 election campaigns being credentialed press at the Mitt Romney Victory Party. The blog would expand to it’s own domain and I would hire my magnificent seven writers, who even now still produce content on the blog (although of the original team only John Ruberry still remains) and it seemed for a while that I might be able to make it in this business.

But as I was to discover notoriety is not the same as income.

To be concluded on Sunday…

15 Thoughts on 15 Years of Blogging Under the Fedora. Thoughts 1 to 5 In the Beginning…

Posted: November 29, 2023 by datechguy in dablog
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Fifteen years ago this week this blog started as the Tech blog for HiWired the company I was working for and wrote the blog for went away. It was going to be the platform where I could talk about subjects that I couldn’t touch on the work blog.

Ironically that seemingly innocent decision has next to my marriage been one of the biggest pivots in my life.

Funny isn’t it

At the time this blog was started Obama had just been elected but not sworn in. I had a good job in my field, financial security and was about as secure as a person could be.

Within a year I was unemployed and unemployable in my field, and the blog that was going to be a pastime became a full time platform to write about things while I tried to find work during the Obama years.

It’s is 14 years later and my full time job which began as a temp position during the final year of Obama still doesn’t pay what I was making before Obama was sworn in and that’s unadjusted for inflation. Four years of Trump was not enough to counter 11 years of Biden and Obama.

The irony of course is all that extra time to write, read and blog led me to the great conflict between Little Green Footballs who I had read for a long time back when Charles Johnson was still sane and the person whose actions would have the greatest effect on my life since the birth of my final son. Robert Stacy McCain.

The conflict between Johnson and McCain can best be followed on Stacy’s old blog here here and here and it was because of that conflict that I contacted Mr. McCain to hear his side of the story:

The story of the phone call that followed is here.

In the end I became of one that group of conservative commentators banned by Charles but my association with Mr. McCain would lead to amazing things.

When the Scott Brown thing was going on, Stacy shook his tip jar to get the funds to come here and cover it. Still not having found a job I had no funds to offer but DaWife consented to letting Stacy stay here to cover the story and I became his driver.

Programming and engineering deal with reality and it was during that week that I learned the difference between commenting from afar and covering something in person.

One of the best posts I ever wrote was done at this time. Boston Berkshires and ‘Bama, the close:

She was a 50 something Coakley volunteer. As I greeted her she sat down in front of Au Bon Pain tired from her exertions and dismayed by the Brown supporters all around where she sat. She had been sent out because of fire regulations, I couldn’t see why she couldn’t be somehow accommodated. I discovered she had come to Massachusetts 15 years ago from her native state of Maryland and cheered the liberal policies that she so believed in that the state seemingly embraced. I asked her finally why she thought a state that had voted 69% for Kennedy and had so convincingly selected Martha Coakley in the primary could change so quickly?

She had her answer.

“The Brown people are a bunch of Redneck Teabaggers.” she proclaimed. “Massachusetts is Boston on one side, the Berkshires on the other with Alabama smack in the middle.” She said this with a bitterness and a contempt that she presumed I had shared since I was standing with the Coakley crowd for nearly my entire time.

At this moment Robert Stacy McCain emerged from Au Bon Pain with the coffee that is the Gasoline of his engine I wished her well and excused myself knowing that my experience of 46 years in that middle of her adopted state would be no match for the comfortably bigoted fiction with which she consoled herself, even if I was inclined to be so un-gallant as to try

The campaign cumulated with my first official set of press credentials when Stacy, Dan Riehl and myself entered the Scott Brown victory party, each of us wearing one of my fedoras

That’s where I met Ace of Spades, Pam Gellar, Roxeanne De Luca Carl Cameron and got my first condescending reaction from a member of the MSM but most importantly it’s where I learned this about the press:

While most of the reporter types were busy talking to themselves, I was interviewing the waitstaff. Why? Because they were the only voters in the room! I talked to more than a dozen of them and got great information on all kinds of things. It speaks volumes that a room full of reporters didn’t think of doing this.

What I didn’t realize at the time is that it wasn’t a question of them thinking of doing it, it was that their narratives were already written. But what I also didn’t know is this tendency to talk to normal people would be the basis for the event that made this more than a one off.

6-10 on Friday

We want belief

Posted: February 13, 2021 by ng36b in dablog, Uncomfortable Truths
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As the impeachment trial winds down, what’s next?

My prediction: widespread non-compliance of future laws.

I watched the Bill Clinton impeachment trial, and it seemed pretty silly at the time. On one side, we wanted to remove a President for lying about a sexual relation he had with an intern. His defense seemed just as silly, as I watched people come up and talk about everything from race relations to economics. All around, it seemed kinda silly.

Trump’s impeachments were even sillier. Admitting news reports as evidence, without actually using eye witnesses or first-hand accounts? It basically broke down to “Trump said things we don’t like,” which in itself is a double standard considering the large number of Senators and Representatives that call for violence against Trump supporters on a regular basis.

Trump’s impeachment won’t change anything in Washington DC. But it will move a lot of people to no longer comply with the law. In front of everyone we’ve seen how the justice system no longer seeks justice. We’ve seen how easy it is to throw someone in jail over small items, or worse, over news reports that don’t have a shred of truth to them. The justice system is committed to getting convictions, period. The truth has become a afterthought.

People will react accordingly. When people don’t believe that the laws they live under are fair, they will find ways to circumvent them. They also will remove their participation from this part of society. We’re already seeing this as police forces are struggling to recruit new officers. The military faced this problem in the wake of the Vietnam Conflict, and will likely face it again given the new focus on “domestic terrorism.” Nobody wants to work where you could get punished capriciously, so they’ll vote with their feet.

The next thing we’re going to see is non-compliance with the worst of rules. If President Biden pushes for gun control, you’ll have gun owners melt into the background. The police can’t afford to go door to door and search every single house to find guns. Heck, they can’t find all of the illegal weapons, let alone legal ones. The same will go for LGBT training, zoning rules, traffic fines, etc. People will simply walk out of training, not follow zoning rules and simply not pay fines. The more it happens, the harder it’ll be to enforce compliance, and the more it will embolden these actions.

We live in a society that relies on most people voluntarily following the law. Police officers are there to punish law breakers, but we’ll never have enough cops to punish widespread disregard for the law. If a large swath of the population doesn’t believe the law is fair or being applied fairly, they’re going to disobey, and it’ll be difficult to stop them.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Da Magnificent Seven Minus One or What the #AB5 ever Happened to Baldilocks?

Posted: July 11, 2020 by datechguy in dablog
Tags: ,

Over the 12 years of this blogs life there have been few constants but since the introduction of DaMagnificent Seven Bloggers seeing Juliette “Baldilocks” Ochieng every Saturday night became a regular feature of the site.

And when Fausta Wertz ended up leaving due to illness Juliette started posting twice a week picking up Tuesday nights. She has brought plenty of traffice to the site and her pieces have been worth every penny I’ve paid her over the years.

However if you have been reading the blog this year you might have noticed that you’ve seen less and less than her. First her twice a week posts became once a week, then it became every other week it became once a week, then they were gone.

The good news it that it’s not due to illness, Juliette is feeling fine, nor is it a matter of a drop in quality. I’ve been delighted with her work and her opinions and insights for years and she is just as sharp as she has been since day one.

Alas the culprit here is the State of California or to be specific the AB5 law.

Under this law if a contractor produces beyond a particular amount of contract work said contractor must be hired as a full time employee subject to all the laws of a normal full time workers rather than as a contributor to a magazine or site.

And while I love her work I simply can’t justify such an expense which would be beyond what we bring in, furthermore if I ignore this law being in Massachusetts I might face a suit from California that would be even more expensive.

So until AB5 is repealed or January rolls around I’m afraid you won’t be seeing new posts authored by Baldilocks. But even more importantly this means Juliette will not be able to earn the money I would have paid her for those posts and the bonus I would give her every time she brought an Instalance to the site.

So while I’m always delighted when anyone hits DaTipJar I’d like to ask an odd favor.

If you have the time, the cash and the inclination consider heading over to her own site here and hit her tip jar to help make up for the dollars that she will not make from the 75 posts that she will not write on the site this year.

I would appreciate it and so would she.

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