You don’t build communities overnight. They have to be seeded, nurtured, and with some attention and interaction they may grow. Same with integrity. You don’t get it by slapping a badge on your website and say “Look at me, look at me! I’m just riddled with integrity now”. You earn it and much like a nickname, you don’t conjure it up yourself. The privilege has to be given to you from some third party. 

I went down a slippery slope last week thinking that the Blog With Integrity site meant something. It does. It means you went to the site, grabbed their code to put on your website, and maybe made a half-hearted attempt at following the guidelines they put together but that’s it. As they say on their website there’s no cost or complicated application process, just display the badge (and optionally sign a pledge page, which carries about the same merit as any Internet petition).

Recently when the people behind the site were asked about what their stance was regarding a certain blogging incident that had the twitter-verse (as well as many news sites) up in arms, they fled to the dark regions of the Internet like brave Sir Robin and came out with this non-response-response:

Over the weekend, a blogger wrote a negative post about her experiences with the TSA during an airport security screening. The TSA refuted her claims in a post that included video of the incident. The inevitable blogstorm ensued.

The blogger displays the Blog with Integrity badge on her blog, and we have been asked in email, in posts and on Twitter about the matter. Some have called for us to ask her to remove the badge. Others merely wonder what we will do.

Here is our position:

Disputes and disagreements are between the parties involved. There are two sides to every story. It’s only fair to let a story play out before anyone makes up their mind.

Blog with Integrity is a voluntary community effort. Not a regulatory body. We don’t make decisions about your integrity. You do. Your readers do. The badge is a symbol of a blogger’s personal commitment to the principles of the pledge; only he or she can decide whether or not to display it.

In this case, we hope that everyone who has blogged, commented or tweeted about the incident will take the opportunity to re-examine his or her own words, and act accordingly.

Remember the final line of the pledge: “I own my words. Even if I occasionally have to eat them.”

Bollocks. Either the group, the followers, and slapping a badge of honor on your site means something or it doesn’t. Stop lolly-gagging around the bases, grow some balls, put some teeth behind the group and start acting like adults. Adults can have opinions and it’s those differing opinions that make communities what they are today and make them interesting to participate in and observe.

Some people will choose to ignore the badge if you don’t believe in it, but then where’s the credibility that you think is behind that 160 pixel square image? Don’t believe in the badge, but it believes in you kind of crap? Credibility, like integrity, is something to be earned. Any kind of blog-bling needs to be something that stems from a process of recognition and acknowledgment rather than copy-n-paste skills of a blogger. I generally give credibility to those that I know and follow, or at least have heard of and can find evidence of said credibility. How do you measure credibility from someone you don’t know?

As a blogger I write with passion and I need to remember and remind myself something above all. Be humble. I remember those words weaved in the Wilbur’s barn by a spider named Charlotte so many years ago, and I try to practice the humble principle every day. It’s okay to be wrong. In fact, it’s a good thing and we need to temper our ego-centric selves with it once in awhile. The more you write the more people read and the more numbers you see in your membership. At some point this wave crests and you say to yourself “I’m important and must have something good to say, otherwise why would anyone listen to it?”. The mere factoid that you have a million people listening to you simply means that somewhere out there a million people *think* you have something interesting to say. Where did you make the leap from someone thinking you have something interesting to say to concrete evidence that you do? It’s the McDonald’s mentality for blogger and something that will get you in a lot of hot water really fast. Just because everyone is doing it doesn’t mean it’s good.

I highly doubt anyone wants to read something that’s entirely *right*. If you’re never wrong, why would anyone listen to more than 140 characters from you? What’s the point of writing 1,000 words in a lengthy drawn out essay (like this one) if you’re really the authoritative source on things. Be humble and expect to be wrong on more than one occasion. Like I said, I think this is an important part of the blogger makeup. You also need to admit when you’re wrong. I can be pretty opinionated at times and I’m sure that opinion (which sometimes comes out as “facts”) is exactly that, wrong. However I’m fully willing to stand up in front of the 10,000 people that read my blog (or 10 in my case) and say “I WAS WRONG” and explain here’s why. I think it makes us *more* human in the long run. When faced with undeniable evidence that you’re wrong, don’t hide behind a flashy dance of smoke and mirrors and indirection trying to distract the reader with techno-babble and bullshit. Stand up and tell it all, which might mean people drop off and some of your *favorite* fans might vanish from your electronic existence. So be it.

How many people have you added to your Facebook account as a “friend” just because they know someone you do (or several people) even though you’ve never heard of the person. I’ve stopped this insanity just to try to get my friend count up so I can kill more werewolves or knock over that big heist in a game where I need 100+ friends to participate. What is the measure of a friend? On Facebook apparently it’s someone you add to an ever growing list, even though you don’t know the person at all. Even when people “friend me” I have to question what is it they’re trying to do? Is this the digital equivalent of the local bar where someone buys you a drink in order to get to know you? Then where is the followup. These so called “friends” want me to add them, but then all I get is extra noise in my feed from them mowing the lawn and buying a new dress. It’s excessive bytes to my already growing stream and not even as good as friends with benefits.

Twitter is no different and I keep trying to prune my herd down to something manageable. Do I *really* know 1000+ people. In twitter land you follow people to keep on top of what they have to say, indicating that you’re actually interested in what they have to say but it’s a one-way street. Sometimes it’s reciprocal but most times you’re listening to a dead phone with nobody on the other end to hear your message. As with Facebook I’m trying to keep my friends down to a dull roar (I think I’m only following a few hundred which I think is manageable). However I have close to 1000 followers, people that think I have something interesting to say. Where is the exchange of pleasantries like the smokey-filled bar with Twitter? Where do I get to vote who can hear me. Sure, I can systematically go in and block people, but that takes time and effort and in this digital age of Internet time we can’t stop and prune our address books on a regular basis. Do you really think Wil Wheton is going to go through his 1.4 million followers and pick the ones he knows and trusts (BTW, he only follows 126 people out of 1.4 million followers, a pretty good ratio IMHO).

Darwin called it natural selection. The concept of fitness is central to natural selection. Modern evolutionary theory defines fitness not by how long an organism lives, but by how successful it is at reproducing. So it seems social networking has taken this concept head on and refuses to buck the trend. The bigger the number of followers you have, the more people you have subscribed to your RSS feed, the higher Google Page Rank your site can fetch. All meaningless numbers that apparently are line items to help you survive.

Rather than quality, we’ve chosen quantity as a measure of success. With that measure comes those things we deem important like integrity and credibility yet we forget the meaning behind them and blindly follow the masses. We need to stop this mindless lemming mentality and stand up for what we truly believe to be right that’s tempered with what is true. We need to stop being self-centered, self-serving sheep with no individuality. We need to stop knee-jerk reacting to what we hear in a twittter-stream and be responsible journalists by reporting the researched facts that have a basis in reality.

Above all, we need to stand up to and take responsibility in a neighborhood watch-like manner on the Internet. When we see something wrong, we right it, we don’t blatantly spread ever post that some idiot with a blog writes without really knowing what we’re talking about and what the consequences of our actions are, directly or indirectly. If we choose to be different we are sometimes ostracized. We have sunken to the digital equivalent of the Salem witch hunts, or more appropriately the witch trials of Monty Python and the Holy Grail where a credible source is measured against the weight of a duck and shuffled away without a thought, while some moistened bint lobbs a blog post or a tweet that everyone proclaims as gospel.

Like I said, communities grow as do friendships, integrity and credibility. Like a garden if something is rotten you cut it off so it doesn’t infest and take out your entire pumpkin patch. If it grows back then perhaps it’s a little stronger than before and we should consider letting it back in to flourish. However in the meantime stop catering to the masses and making excuses for those that should know better.

This weekend was probably one of the last good weather weekends we’ll see in High River. After this I suspect 10-15 degree days with some sunshine and then collapsing into a dreary and gray winter. However today was bright and sunny and an excellent day for the River City Classics Car Club Show ‘n’ Shine here in town.

Literally hundreds of antique and unique cars came out (along with their owners I suppose) to show off their gleaming chrome and rich colour to everyone who would look. It’s amazing to see cars from 80 years ago look better than brand new. The care and effort people put into them is extraordinary and it really shows. It makes me think about when these cars ruled the road and it was all about the bling.

We headed out with Vista only to realize that I had left the memory card for the camera back at home. We walked around for about 30 minutes and then came back home. I grabbed the memory card then drove back down to the show to snap some of these pictures.

The hood ornament on this Ford (I can’t remember the year but I think it was from around 55-56) isn’t stock. The owner said he found it at a flea market and thought it was interesting so added it later. Looks great!

This crazy looking thing is a modified 1958 Chevy Ratrod. Rat is right as you can see the engine is infested with them, not to mention the severed heads and various Munster-like effects.

The only De Soto I can remember is the one that Howard Cunningham kept referring to in Happy Days. I don’t know if Howards De Soto ever looked this good!

You can view my entire Flickr set here from the day (about 60 photos).

Heading home after vacation is always a chore and a task, and a pleasant relief.

Found DVDs! Days ago we went hunting for V’s DVD collection. We brought it with us to keep her occupied. After all what do you do with a two year old in a car for 12 hours? The set included about a dozen Signing Time DVDs, The Wiggles, a couple of Baby Einstein, and a brand new Winnie the Pooh – Friendship Edition that I bought days ago (as a replacement for her other copy which is worn out now).

Panic sunk in as we thought we lost them. I mean, it’s about $2000 to replace all these DVDs and it’s not something you want to lose (especially after potentially losing my Flip video camera). However as we were travelling home today they magically showed up!

The lost DVDs from the last few days were found courtesy of Mike. I seriously tore that cab apart trying to find them. Then Jenn did. Then her mother. Jenn’s mother who could find virginity at a co-ed dorm couldn’t find the DVD case. All it took was a 16 year old who wasn’t feeling very well to sit in the front seat and say “Are these them?”. Nice.

For dinner it was pizza delivered right to the hotel door. I think the notion of going out for dinner passed in our minds, but passed so quickly that by the time Jenn was paying for the meal, it was just an afterthought. By the way, has anyone noticed how quickly an entire pizza can be consumed by a single 16 year old? I don’t recall being 16 (I think I traded that part of my memory in for a software upgrade) but I swear the only time I could engulf an entire pizza myself was when I was drunk and stupid at the ripe old age of 22. Of course immediately after gobbling down the pasta treat, it came back up (along with the 6 pack I shot gunned).

Kids.

Looks like the first photo of this trip doesn’t it? Nope. It was taken about 120 hours later. I guess things never change.

You can view the entire Flickr set for this trip here.

V’s fairly traumatic escapade with the dunk in the lake (she’s still repeating “I fall in water” over and over again) didn’t mean we were going to keep her away from the water. After all, we are at a lake so the wet stuff is all around us.

This doesn’t mean we’re evil parents and will toss our 2 year old into the water to test if she weighs the same as a duck. If she didn’t want to go, we weren’t going to force her. However we wanted to try to get her back near the water as soon as possible so she didn’t implant the notion that water == bad and never go near it again. I know of events that can send children over the edge so much that even a bath would be a traumatic event.

We had the pleasure of spending a few hours on a pontoon boat heading out to the only island at McLeese Lake, luckily owned by Jenn’s cousin’s grandmother (don’t even ask me to try to translate that relation into something more descriptive). V was a little distant on the boat but not skittish or anything and eventually calmed down and enjoyed the ride (I remember even a few smiles coming out of her on the way back from the island).

The grandmother bought the island for $25 back when you could buy islands (before 1933). A tradition on the island (started years ago) was to put a plaque on a rock in the middle of the island for members of the family who have passed on. The first plaque (it’s believed) is the grandmother who lived from 1883-1963. The latest plaque was placed there a few months ago for Bob who was born in 1915.

An fitting allegory for the family members and a tradition that will live on throughout the years, long past it’s inhabitants.

After the trip to the island we spent a good night with the kids at the lake. Mike was having a great time being tossed around in an inner tube on the lake and V just chilled on the shore refilling the lake with rocks.

You can view the entire Flickr set for this trip here.

5:30 is the time birds start chirping and the sun rises and the night creatures head to bed. It should not be the time young two year old girls wake their parents up after a day of travelling. However in McLeese Lake, B.C. it is. Maybe it was a sign of the times for things to come but who were we to know what was in store today?

“I fall in water”

That’s all she kept saying after we got on shore. And hours. And Days. Later.

V, Jenn and I headed out with Jenn’s father into a canoe for a leisurely row. It started out nice. V sat with me in the middle of the boat; Jenn steered; and Jenn’s father Howard was the power. V enjoyed it as she could see the water pass by, the drift of the canoe was slow and rhythmic. A pair of loons in the middle of the lake sat quietly by as we passed them.

We turned inward and headed back. A powerboat came off from the docks towards us. You know that weird feeling you when you look at something? That feeling like something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong? You know it’s going to happen, but you refuse to act. Maybe you can’t or you just can’t believe it’s going to happen and your body doesn’t react.

We saw them come towards us. Powerboat versus canoe. They were 30 yards out. Then 20. Then 10. It was around that time we realized that a) they were doing about 30-40kph and b) they were about 10 feet away from the boat from the starboard. Yeah, a 30kph motor boat 10 feet away from a canoe. There’s no surprise to the outcome.

Jenn turned the boat as best as she could but we didn’t realize they were not going to slow down or pull away until it was too late. The first wave from their wake hit us and hit hard but it was just a strong rock as we swayed back and forth from it’s power. The second wave. That was the bullet.

I remember being tossed from the boat and over the port side. I was holding Vista and never let go. I did what I could to keep her up, not worrying about myself and not even thinking about the situation. My only concern was to keep her above the water. With my eyes open the entire time, I remember looking at V under the water. It was only for a few seconds (2-3 at the most as I recall) but she looked okay. She wasn’t gulping down gallons of lake water which was a good thing. She was just a little in shock as she didn’t quite know what was happening.

I came up seconds later, holding Vista above my head trying to tread water with my legs. She was crying as it was quite the different environment than being in the boat. Luckily for us, the water in the lake was very warm and pretty clear. A few moments later Jenn surfaced and then her father. I started heading inwards to the shore which was about 30 yards away. Jenn wanted to take V in while I helped her father with the canoe.

We dragged the canoe in. At about 10 yards from the shore it’s about 5 feet deep so another stroke of luck and we can walk in from there. V was okay, still crying and shook up from the incident but seemingly alright. It was another half hour before we got everyone on shore, the boat setup and heading back to the dock, and V in dry clothes and sitting with family at camp. I finally dragged my butt back to the cabin to get some dry clothes.

The casualties? My wallet and all my id. It’s since dried out but there are some receipts lost that I’ll have to figure out how to explain at work to reclaim my expenses. The other loss was my new Flip video camera (along with 2 hours of video of Vista) was toast. Jenn later said it did turn on (after about 24 hours of inactivity). It’s sitting in my pocket right now and I’ll probably give it another few days before I plug it in and try to recover the data.

No way to track the asshats down that did this. They were obviously wreckless. You don’t pass by a canoe that close and that fast. They even saw Vista so knew there was a baby on board. Also they didn’t bother to stop after dumping us. There were no real markings on the boat and we couldn’t find it afterwards. The lake is enclosed so they must have been day trippers so they’re long gone.

A few hours later though V was quiet and calmed down somewhat, enough to spend some time in the hammock with her cousin Heather.

She’s good but she kept repeating “I fall in water” the remainder of the day. That bothers me.

You can view the entire Flickr set for this trip here.