Get Out!

Well, it was bound to happen eventually.

It seems that with the new user submitted content and the arrival of a few new bloggers on Between The Lines, I've been told that I need to start looking for a new home on ZDNet. Much like my own parents turned my bedroom into a home office after I came home from school those many years ago, I've been told by ZDNet's editorial staff to "Get thee out of the house and get a real job, son" as it were. Alas, Jason Perlow will shortly have to stand on his own without the benefit of traffic from EIC Larry Dignan's core audience - I'll be getting my own blog on ZDNet and will have to compete for your page views like everyone else. I'm going to be putting up a shingle and will be open for business soon, so stay tuned.

There is the issue, of course, what the name and focus of the blog will be about. And hence lies my dilemma -- unlike most of the other columnists on this fine media site, I don't really have a specialty - I'm a generalist and know a smattering of everything. Despite having covered Linux for over a decade at other publications, I'm not the Open Source and Linux/Unix guy on ZDNet -- Dana Blankenhorn, Paula Rooney and Paul Murphy have that well covered. Mary Jo Foley, Ed Bott and Adrian Kingsley-Hughes have the Redmondian and PC technology perspective from news to analysis to maxi-zoom-dweebie benchmarking extremely well taken care of. And we have specialists for things like Macs, Storage and Virtualizaton too. As I originally told Larry, don't try to put me in the box as subscribing to any particular religion or platform ideology -- I'm an equal opportunity offender and will slaughter any sacred cow if the opportunity exists. I am, at the core, a multiplatformist.

When I was originally brought in to start blogging for ZDNet, I was asked to look at things from the perspective of someone who works in the trenches in the industry as a systems integrator, who has seen real solutions in the field and can comment on what works, what doesn't, and what sort of things real companies - small and large businesses alike --are looking at implementing in the real world. At the same time, I like to continually re-evaluate the industry and watch trends, and do a bit of forward-looking analysis on my own. I don't always have the most popular opinion, and I can't claim to be some sort of bellweather for the industry, but I try to be relevant.

So what do we call the new blog? My food web site is Off The Broiler, so I suggested "Tech Broiler" as the potential title. Larry likes it, but I think ZDNet's readers can do better.

Here are a few I've been spinning:

"Technobesity" or "Rumblings of a Fat Alpha Geek"  a play on my large frame.

"Born in a Big Blue Suit"  homage to my current employer.

"Life in EliteAccess"  a testament to my Continental Airlines frequent flyer rank from spending 4 days out of the week away from home

 "Cervical Strained"  Memories of a recent Cape Cod vacation gone totally wrong.

"Pressure Cooker" a metaphorical reference to my life as an integrator and my obsessive cooking hobby.

I know you guys can do better than this. Talk Back and Let Me Know.