Friday, June 21, 2002

Dave Winer, UserLand founder, still not dead


Dave Winer‘s disappearance stunned the blogging community. Winer, a workaholic, journalist, software engineer, and entrepreneur, didn’t show up for his daily blogging on Saturday, June 16. 



Where’s Dave?



It turns out Dave was just not feeling well. Hospitalized for an unspecified condition, speculation runs wild. Dean Peters said “Don’t worry, my uncle had the same thing … she’s doing much better now!”



Withdrawal symptoms reveal blog addictions.



“Dave is crack” is the dominant theme.



Nigel Rowe: “After [June] the 20th the withdrawal symptoms kicked in. I tried everything, super-refresh, dumping my cache, firing up a different browser, deleting all my cookies in case I was being punished for hitting refresh too often. Nothing worked.” 



Deborah Branscum, a confessed Dave groupie, agrees. “Tell Dave he is absolutely not allowed to be any sicker than he is already, or we’ll storm the joint. We’ve got the jones for Scripting News and we need it, bad.”  



Bernie DeKoven “sensed a disturbance in the force.”



Ron Pihlgren “I miss my daily fix of scripting.com”.



Even computers miss Dave. “My aggregator misses you” said Drew Wells.



Guy Bjerke tried turning to caffeine but “coffee doesn’t taste the same when it’s not sipped while reading SN.”  



Richard Herring said “Us ‘Dave Junkies’ will just have to go through withdrawl.”



No consensus on whether blog addiction is its own disease or just a variant of internet addiction.



Other reactions:




  • 137 mentions of prayer (including agnostics and at least one atheist)
  • 43 mentions of chicken soup
  • 11 mentions of jello
  • 3 mentions of nurses
  • 1 Doggie web log 

Sensory Deprivation.



Can you imagine Dave Winer disconnected for a whole week? No email? No news feeds? No posting to 20 web sites before morning coffee? No coffee? No hour-long phone interviews? No coding?



What will fill the void?



What mind bombs will emerge from that creative vacuum?



What must be going through his mind?



Share your best wishes.
[a klog apart]

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