Some of the people, some of the time.

As things happen in my day and I wonder if I have anything to say about them (what with this whole new blogging adventure and such) I've been having a hard time trying to come to a good answer to the questions of: How much detail is too much detail? When does personal get too personal? Should I worry about people's feelings and assume that I have to write neutrally in order to please all of the people all of the time? How to avoid revealing something about someone else that they wouldn't want to be public? Do I need to worry about a future employer, or my parents, or the FBI or NSA or Customs & Border Protection, or whoever... reading this and it having real-world-I'm-not-kidding-you-this-is-really-serious consequences? Over just a blog?

Well, I don't want you, gentle reader, to be bored out of your mind with boring, impersonal, sterile crap, either. I mean, we all want to know what's going on, right? Gossip is... fun, right? That's kind of the whole point - if you didn't want to hear the latest what's-what, you would have never clicked your way here. If I just wrote about Xbox game reviews or decried the latest offensive thing that an extreme socialist or extreme fascist politician had done, well, there's plenty of blogs about that stuff. So as a matter of administrative ground rules:

[WARNING: boring impersonal sterile crap ahead]
here's what I'm thinking about what I'll say and not say:

- I am gonna talk about people. We live in a world full of people and there's no way to avoid it. If you are a person, I might even talk about you.
- I probably WILL use people's first names, but WILL NOT use last names. Unless of course, you're a public person (have been written up in newspaper or have been on TV, or hold government office). If you have published your own first and last name online, then you are considered public.
- If you see your name in print and are super-creeped out by it, let me know and I will invent a nickname and replace your name with it (you don't get any input on nickname selection though)
- No addresses, email or otherwise, or geographically identifying information more specific than a city. Photos won't be connectable to the addresses of people's homes.
- Children's names will be changed. Pets (a.k.a. Companion Animals) get no such anonymity.
[PHEWW - end of boring crap]