Where's Matt?

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Profile Matt Lebofsky
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Message 977497 - Posted: 12 Mar 2010, 0:22:40 UTC

So my daily technical news reports unceremoniously stopped. Sorry about that, but I pretty much hit the limit. To answer some questions:

Q: Did you leave?
A: No. I'm still very much here working on the usual all-kinds-of-stuff.

Q: Are you on vacation?
A: Not currently. I'm becoming wary of regularly writing as myself on the web, as a sudden dearth of content means I'm currently unable/unwilling to write, which may be a clue that I actually am on vacation at the moment. I find letting the internet world know I'm on vacation (and therefore my house is probably unoccupied) is bad form.

Q: So the music career is picking up?
A: It's true that I'm a professional musician on the side. While I do high-profile well-paying gigs occasionally this is hardly my main source of income. I'm lucky to be in a position that most of the music I create/perform is filed under "art" and therefore (a) more fulfilling/challenging, and (b) under zero pressure to make any money. I'll always take respect from my fans/peers over money. In other words, real musicians have day jobs. Anyway, I have no plans to abandon either of these careers.

Q: So you'll stay with SETI full time?
A: Nobody around here works on SETI full time. I more or less do about 35 (very flexible) hours a week on average. I could (should?) do more, but I am a chronic multitasker (ADD, perhaps?). There's the aforementioned music stuff, but I'm also doing some regular contract work for Tapulous, Inc. on their highly popular Tap Tap Revenge iPhone game. And my wife is getting her new food business off the ground, and I'm helping with that (I'm actually not a bad sous chef). This past weekend I spent some time helping her serve up hot, delicious Mediterranean flatbread sandwiches at various farmer's markets - fixing the grills, taking orders, rolling out the dough... It seems I only function when preoccupied with many varied simultaneous activities. Like teaching my Doberman to play bass drum (true story).

Q: Do you sleep?
A: Not so much, no.

Q: What do you mean "you hit the limit?" Are you mad at us?
A: No. No. No. Nothing personal, but I'd really like other project staff to chime in more often, and maybe I need to step away in order for that to happen. Plus being in the spotlight I sometimes find myself having to argue on behalf of policies or practices around here which I don't know much about, or I don't exactly agree with. Meh. I do wish SETI@home had better avenues and resources for public relations. In any case I'll still keep working towards improving that in the future whenever I can, whether or not that's direct contact from me or otherwise. The daily notes were fun, but honestly probably not the best use of my time. I may just report about bigger projects as they happen. We'll see.

So I'll be around - just a lot quieter.

- Matt

-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude
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Message 977506 - Posted: 12 Mar 2010, 1:11:36 UTC

Sad to hear that the daily posts are history. As a infrequent lurker on the site, your posts were about all I read.

As a donor of time and money, it was nice to get some insight on what was going on even if it seemed a trivial conversation at times.

Good luck with enouraging others on the team to be a bit more public. As a long time reader of these forums I've seen a lot of broken promises in that regard by others.

Perhaps you would consider posting weekly after the shutdown? Irregular posts would be discouraging (checking and finding nothing new), and problaly would end up with me and a lot of other donors tuning out.
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Message 977533 - Posted: 12 Mar 2010, 2:59:40 UTC - in response to Message 977506.  

Thanks!

Perhaps you would consider posting weekly after the shutdown? Irregular posts would be discouraging (checking and finding nothing new), and problaly would end up with me and a lot of other donors tuning out.


I certainly understand that daily updates are cumbersome and really not necessary most days when things are running normally. I would also rather see an update/status message after the weekly outage.

Join the PACK!
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Message 977709 - Posted: 12 Mar 2010, 15:08:23 UTC - in response to Message 977497.  

Matt,

Love the picture of the kitten playing with your guitar.

Perhaps you could just do a weekly post in tech news instead of daily? Maybe each Tuesday after the outage. That way you won't get burned out again. But, yes I agree and would welcome other staff members contributing to the forums.

Play your heart out.

--Mike
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Profile Gary Charpentier Crowdfunding Project Donor*Special Project $75 donorSpecial Project $250 donor
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Message 977750 - Posted: 12 Mar 2010, 17:09:02 UTC - in response to Message 977709.  

Matt,

Love the picture of the kitten playing with your guitar.

Perhaps you could just do a weekly post in tech news instead of daily? Maybe each Tuesday after the outage. That way you won't get burned out again. But, yes I agree and would welcome other staff members contributing to the forums.

Play your heart out.

--Mike

Well, it doesn't have to be Matt that does a weekly post. Perhaps a rotation schedule and that way no one person will feel put upon.
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kittyman Crowdfunding Project Donor*Special Project $75 donorSpecial Project $250 donor
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Message 978672 - Posted: 14 Mar 2010, 16:05:32 UTC

Matt.......
I miss your daily, mundane reporting of the simple works at Seti.
But I understand.

Chime in when you can and wish to.

BTW...have you any links to your music?

That would be nice to share too.
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 978677 - Posted: 14 Mar 2010, 16:25:58 UTC - in response to Message 978672.  


BTW...have you any links to your music?

That would be nice to share too.


Two links at the end of this topic--
http://qcn.stanford.edu/sensor/forum_thread.php?id=262...
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Message 983064 - Posted: 24 Mar 2010, 13:00:12 UTC


. . . Accolades to ALL that you do do Matt . . . be well [that's the main thing]

you've done a whole lot of trumped-up good here for quite some time - kudo's my friend . . .

always, richard [and joanne as well]


BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .
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Message 985657 - Posted: 31 Mar 2010, 20:42:49 UTC

I too miss the updates. Strange, but for some reason even a 10 line update, which shouldn't take that long to type, keeps me interested in this project. I keep logging in, hoping for something, and nothing. I'm not trying to make enemies, and if I do, who cares, since I'm only an account (which can suddenly disappear, YIPE!) and an email address, but come on, nobody there has an extra 10 minutes a day for typing a quick "what's up" email?? Yes I've read Matt's reasonings for no more updates, but I'm still just a small bit away from typing "boo hoo". It's just a 10 minute update!!
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Profile Bill Walker
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Message 985674 - Posted: 31 Mar 2010, 23:28:41 UTC - in response to Message 985657.  

You can get a weekly fix here: http://seti.berkeley.edu/blog

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