FRID

I'm a writer by profession. That'd explain why this is my first blog, and I've never really kept a diary, except for that tormented time in college when I spent so many nights cryin' over a boy named Allan. I still have that journal. It is as silly as it sounds.

So, I write all day. And it's nothing super-cool (well to me, anyway). I'd love to write about architecture, or skiing, or sailing, or wars and politics and third-world countries and solving world peace. But I'll settle for pretty cool.

Right now, I'm covering RFID (I often type it too fast and it ends up as FRID, hence this blog's name). Anyway, RFID is a technology. Couldn't you tell? All technology is written in acronyms. RFID stands for radio frequency identification. For privacy freaks, RFID means tiny little spychips that spooky governments are going to inject into the nooks of all of our backs while we sleep so they can collect nanosecond by nanosecond our every move. For corporate behemoths plotting to take over the world, like Wal-Mart, RFID represents innovative new technology that'll solve the problem of an empty shelf when the Wal-Mart shopper walks down the aisle looking for fried pork skins. For the middle of the road folks looking both ways, RFID will settle in as a useful tool to help track goods, improve food and drug safety, and even provide personal security, if you want it. There's quite a few other useful applications for RFID, which by the way are tiny chips the size of a grain of rice that communicate data via RF waves.

So I write about RFID. (Now you know why I have the RFID Journal link... a very good site owned and run by my friend and employer Mark Roberti, who offered me a part-time gig to write articles every week for the online publication.) I also cover other technologies, and have for the better part of 15 years. Let's see... I was writing about networking, IBM mainframes, and a strange thing called OSI (Open Systems Interconnect... I even wrote a 120-page book on this tech topic!) before e-mail was a common form of communication. Fax was where it was at back then. I wrote about network and system management before IP was hip. Then came the Internet, the World Wide Web, and E-commerce (yep, covered 'em all). I moved on to enterprise applications, service-oriented architectures, and more.

I'm freelancing now full time, spending half of my work week covering RFID and the other half covering various and sundry technologies for various clients. I'd like to go on to other stuff, but I must be mindful of what butters my bread. I got a little one and a decent lifestyle that at 41, I'm not willing to give up.

Of course, writing full time, whatever the topic, leaves me with little incentive to ramble in a blog or write some amazing short story or >gasp!< a novel. Maybe someday.

Anyhoo, I've got to get back to the butter. And RFID.