Well, here it is 2015. The headlines are divers and depressing, and I have an opinion about most of them, but nary the will to write about any of them. It has been that way for most of 2014, and from this point in January, I don't see much changing in that regard. This alone explains the big decline in posting frequency on this blog.
I'm not entirely sure what that means for the future, but I do know enough to know that I am not ready to give up on writing, and subsequently, I'm not ready to give up on this blog. So to kick off the new year, perhaps it is time for an origin story.
I find it mildly interesting that in the five years I've been blogging, no one has ever actually asked me to explain the story behind the title and tagline of my blog. It is especially interesting given that I am an Auburn University alumnus and I have an elephant head background on the site (more indicative of that other school across the state). It is not that riveting a story, but it as good a topic as any right now, I suppose. (Cue wavy camera fade and harp).
Many years ago, I was working for a telecommunications equipment manufacturer that was struggling to survive in the post dot-com-bust economy. Leadership was making questionable choices, and the stock value was plummeting to penny-stock status. Yahoo was the big dog in those days. One day, I found myself on Yahoo Finance (not sure if that was the name back then), watching my company's stock performance. Yahoo had a message board, and thus began one of my earliest introductions to the morass that makes up the comments sections on the internet. Most of the posters were just bashing the company, purporting to have inside knowledge that they didn't have, and me - being prone to fits of righteous indignation - took umbrage. So I created an alias called "elephant-walker" (the origin of which I will get to in a moment), and while extremely careful not to reveal anything that could be considered insider or proprietary in any way, fought back against the haters. I learned very quickly that you cannot defeat haters, because the haters never acknowledge defeat. In the end, the alias survived longer than the company. Go figure.
So why "elephant-walker"? It all comes back to the job, or rather, my caricature of the job function for which I seem most suited. Some engineers get to design stuff; me, at that point in my career, my job was to fix stuff. Products would get designed and released to market, and then the engineering responsibility (feature enhancements, bug fixes, part obsolescence, quality) for those product lines fell to me. Joking one day, I came up with what is now the tagline for this blog: "Everyone's got a role to play … even if it is walking behind the elephant". Somebody has to clean up the, well, you know.
Before you think me too cynical, you should know that over time I began to wear it as a badge of honor. I carved a niche for myself in being able to come into a task, assess the situation, propose and execute a solution that resulted in better products and better processes. Indeed, a former supervisor of mine once told me that I had special knack at turning stinking elephant dung into fine, expensive stationery. (I told him then that he was seriously straining the analogy, but the compliment was well received).
So when I finally decided to create a blog in 2004 (it would take me until 2009 to really do anything with it), it just seemed to make sense to extend this online persona. I shortened elephant-walker to E-Walker, and well, elephant parades are a thing, so, well, there it is. E-Walker's Parade. And the tagline. (I like the tag line). The elephant graphic came much later after Google blogger updated its blog template.
And there you have it. The origin story for E-Walker's Parade. I trust that your day has been enriched by this provocative insight. No? Well, at least now I have a post for January.
If you will excuse me, I need to go clean off my shovel. Until next time!
