The main-stream media’s coverage of the recent slaying of a father and baby in Sacramento has me in a lather.

For every one of them who continue to remind us, often in the same newscast or story, that the baby was shot “execution-style” or “executed” or “shot in the back of the head,” I have one thing to say…

My wife is always nice enough to acknowledge the rare appearance of my Xbox headset. The headset is for communicating with friends and enemies whilst floating through the online universe of Xbox Live.

Her acknowledgement once consisted of nothing more than a snicker and an eye-roll, but the last few times I’ve worn it, she will grab my extra headset and put it on backwards and ask me if she’s doing it right.

Needless to say, the shame of wearing the headset has never passed me by without waving to me and saying, “hey there, dork.”

Todd Levin from tremble.com (a regular read for me) also experiences some shame when he puts on his Xbox headset.

From tremble.com:

Another aspect of online gaming that’s really new to me is “voice chat.” This means speaking to other gamers live, over a network, often during gameplay. And *that* necessitates wearing a headset that is so completely pathetic it requires you draw all the curtains in your home and cover your mirrors like a Jewish funeral, in order to engage in online gameplay without suffering a debilitating crisis of dignity. (I’ve only reached for the headset once so far, after promising myself and Lisa I never would, and after only a few minutes of messing around in a game called Gears of War, I had to stop because my eyes were involuntarily producing hot, blinding tears of shame–like some kind of biological dignity defense system.)

We have sold our house and are moving.

Seven years we’ve been here. We got married while we lived here. We had our son while we lived here. We have lost a best friend and met new ones while we lived here.

I’ve turned every screw in the house. I’ve oiled every door. I’ve painted, sanded, touched up, repainted, replaced, demolished, rebuilt and rewired at least half of my total time spent in this house.

If you could take a 7 year exposure of the floor plan, my figure would fill every millimeter of the frame.

It would seem that I’m haunting my own house.

Seeing the wires in the photo reminded me of when we decided to move our entertainment center from one room to another. I *had* to wire the other room for sound as well.

I don’t remember regretting the waste of time that was my initial wire-job. In fact, I don’t really regret anything I’ve done to this house, even as I turn to walk away from it.

A home may be built, but for me, it will always reside in a state of construction. To now lament how much time or money I spent on a project is to negate the quality of the work itself. I chose to use quality materials and take my time, I wanted to raise 6×6s instead of 4×4s, I needed two skylights instead of one, I painted my son’s room three times not because I thought he might soil the walls, but because there was a vision for it.

It had little to do with resale value, unless you consider it the daily value I would feel towards the house for having done it right or at least gone a little further than was necessary. What we purchased was a valuable ending to meaningful labor.

While I have no immediate plans for the house to which we are moving, you can bet that my tools won’t be idle for long.

I’m working on a script at work today. It’s for an online training series we’re going to deliver about a site building system I manage.

The script is about the Newsletter feature of the system.

From the top:

Newsletters are a fundamental piece of many of our sites. Taken from the Latin novus tabellae, the word newsletter literally means “to attempt elegant page design using Microsoft Word.”

This morning, I got up and did the usual 3-step routine.

1. Pee
2. Coffee
3. Internet

During step three, I was cruising through my news feeds when I stumbled across my first 9/11 story. This is due to the fact that I hadn’t read through my feeds in a while and they were backed up.

Since then, the feeds are PACKED with 9/11 stories. Most of these stories have been open calls for remembrance, for a renewed sense of what happened, for us to unite once again under the banner of national tragedy.

A few news forums I visited were beset by people actually mocking the media-assault of remembrance. Sure, there were mockers ready on 9/12/01, but time has made it safer for more people to speak up, even if they are just trolling. I pulled the picture above from one of these forums.

Later in the morning, I asked my wife how long it will take until we experience a 9/11 without so much fan-fair, how long until 9/11 is whittled down into any other sad holiday, like Memorial Day or Easter.

I’m not opposed to people grieving publicly for the losses experienced on 9/11, nor am I unaffected by what happened. It’s just that time usually heals all wounds, but I feel like this won’t be the case with 9/11.

Our politicians, the television media, and even Osama bin Laden get so much attention from mentioning 9/11, I believe the fuss will never die down.

It seems as though my great-great-grandchildren will be watching holographic images of the towers collapsing underneath the floating 3-D specter of some 22nd Century politician who claims that this travesty must never happen again. Virtual fireworks shaped like American flags will explode all around him in sync with each vitriolic catch-phrase.

9/11, in other words, is good for business. It’s not good for my business, or for my genuine feelings about the day. However, there are many people out there who have hung lifelong agendas from its hook.

Combined with the instant and infinite modes of communication we enjoy, I fear the wound will never heal.