I thought Mildly Informative went out of business!

Most of you have probably gotten over the shock of not receiving your Mildly Informative IV Drip for some time now. If you haven’t, I know a mediocre therapist who won’t solve your any of your issues, but will sympathetically hand you tissues while ignoring you pour out your heart.

Two forces have conspired to prevent my heretofore semi-regular dissemination. The first was a full-time programming job I accepted at the beginning of 2010. As this was my first W-2 job since 1984, you can imagine what a massive fail this was. It underscored poor financial decisions, but worse it exposed my severe lack of skills in starting a venture which I had hoped would be wildly successful and lucrative, but is instead mildly monetarily successful at best, even if it does provide an amazing quality of life.

The second force causing my lack of communication is that I’m male. Ha ha, just kidding. It’s Facebook. I could probably tell you all the reasons Facebook obsoletes predecessors, but my guess is that you’re more savvy with the platform (I’ve never poked anyone) and would come up with several reasons that I overlooked.

When I began my search for a full time position (I still cringe at those 3 words), Fitpacking was languishing and I thought I’d have to close up shop. I also found that my web programming skill set was dated, so I learned ASP (I’m not nearly the disciple of Microsoft that corporations seem to be), using the Fitpacking web site on which to learn it.

By the time the hideously ugly Fitpacking site was completely transformed into its now moderately ugly state, I was working full time. Unexpectedly however, the overhauled site starting bringing in new business. By the time summer rolled around, I was far too busy running trips to keep the job, so I quit. Note: “Yay!”, is the proper response here, unless you inexplicably want to be in some kind of stable relationship with me.

I met some amazing people last season and visited Redwood National Park, Yosemite, Crater Lake, Shenandoah, Mt. Rainier, Canyonlands, and the White Mountains. However, when the season ended in October it was back to work.

This time however I accepted a contract with Abt associates in Cambridge. I worked on and deployed (great resume word) TRI.Net for the EPA … a program that monitors toxics dumped into the environment. Finally, computer work I could feel good about. In fact, you can download and use the program yourself if you’d like to monitor toxics in your area (or your co-worker’s cubicle) http://www.epa.gov/tri/tridotnet/index.html .

In December, my Aunt Diana Zimmerman passed away. She was the last remaining member of my father’s family, or at least in that generation. So it was sad not only to lose her, but to think of my father, who died just over 20 years ago now. Not only did I just start thinking about my father again and reflect for quite some time … after writing that, it makes it really hard to segue into anything else.

Anyway, back to self-serving detritus. The March issue of Backpacker Magazine contained a feature article about Fatpacking. I could try to hype it, but I’m not as attached to you reading it as I used to be when I was a lot more insecure. http://www.fitpacking.com/BackpackerArticle.pdf . It was actually pretty good exposure and I want to thank the writer Jim Gorman for making Fatpacking somehow seem like a desirable outfitter.

I’m not going to drag you through all the other dumb media exposure Fitpacking has been fortunate enough to generate, but two cool ones are Money Magazine and CNN / Money.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/27/pf/computer_hiking.moneymag/index.htm
http://money.cnn.com/video/pf/2010/05/28/pf_sa_fit_packing.moneymag/

Oh, and lest I forget to mention Barf Bags, last fall I went to New York City and was interviewed by Adam West (you might know him as “Adam West” on Family Guy, or possibly as Batman) regarding the Air Sickness Bag collection. It’s for a pilot he wants the network to pick up. It was fun, absurd, cool, surreal and educational (?) all at the same time.

So many other amazing things have happened to so many other amazing people I know but I don’t know what they are. So at the risk of this tome becoming moderately informative, I’ll stop here.

Steve