Egad! I've been out of the house three nights out of the past four, piggybacking off my sister's social network mostly, but also connecting up with some old friends I haven't seen in a long time who are still around. It feels good to get out and socialize, though running with people in their early 20s has left me more than a little winded on occasion. I find it challenging to stay out until 5am and get back up on my horse three and a half hours later, the old college ways. But I love challenges, so...

I also met the two minds behind Grass Commons; we're collaborating on Alonovo.com (which is going to be cool) and found out that we're improbably located in the same town. So I had lunch with Lewis and Ethan and we whooped it up about the revolution for a bit, then they helped me grok Ruby and Rails and invited me to stay for dinner at the CoOp where Lewis and his girlfriend Darcy (who I know from high school, natch) live.

I'm coming out of my cocoon to find Eugene isn't so bad. It's a beautiful time of year, and the city teems with young pretty people, many of them leading surprisingly fascinating lives. I'll be here for two more weeks to finish up some work before I pack up and head back east. Could be a fun couple of weeks.

After 7 months of living out of a bag preceeded by 18 months of living as a crazed political workaholic who left most of his crap in a locker in lower Manhattan preceeded by 2 years of being an artsy bum and computer nerd in Brooklyn, I find my wardrobe is running a little thin. As it looks like things are ramping up in the "professional" arena, I'm going to have (at the very least) to go out and get something I can wear to one of those meetings where there's a big table and a majority of the other people are wearing suits (though maybe not ties).

This means at a minimum I'm in the market for shoes, slacks, a dressy shirt and probably a jacket. Or something that's equivalently responsible-looking. That's one outfit, but as I hate (hate) shopping for clothes, my thinking is that this might be the time to do a more or less total overhaul. Like a band-aid: one motion; right off!

Some staples like 517s, wife-beaters, boxer briefs are unlikely to go out the window, but basically everything else is up for grabs. For the professional stuff, I'd rather not get something standard. Not only do I find most businesswear to be spiritually crushing, I also have an active economic interest in preserving my image of creativity, eccentricity and rebelliousness. In a word, I need to retain some style.

However, what that style is... that's an open question. My friend Molly Keough had some interesting shirts to which she had sewn bits of fabric that made a graph of average worker's wages vs. CEO compensation 40 years ago and today. I've also seen some cool stuff done with stencils and silkscreens. I'm into the whole DIY ethic, but I'm also not the most crafty at these things, might rather want to support someone trying to make a living.

So. Any suggestions?

Shorter Peter Daou: how the blogosphere can make an impact as a tool of the establishment. This is possible, because the grown up world is just like high school:

Bloggers can exert disproportionate pressure on the media and on politicians. Reporters, pundits, and politicians read blogs, and, more importantly, they care what bloggers say about them because they know other reporters, pundits, and politicians are reading the same blogs.

I have a big post coming on this in a little while.

Shorter Peter Daou: how the blogosphere can make an impact as a tool of the establishment. This is possible, because the grown up world is just like high school:

Bloggers can exert disproportionate pressure on the media and on politicians. Reporters, pundits, and politicians read blogs, and, more importantly, they care what bloggers say about them because they know other reporters, pundits, and politicians are reading the same blogs.

I have a big post coming on this in a little while.