2003: Never Forget

This week's Stranger news section contains an article about a Nintendo contractor who was fired for her blog. "Not work appropriate" said Nintendo, although, what the hell does that have to do with anything? The blogger Jessica Zenner blogged anonymously and without naming her employer or her coworkers. It sounds like her blog was known among her coworkers, though, and according to the article she used "hormonal, facial-hair-growing, frumpy" to describe a female boss. It's not exactly as if you'd written it on the white board in the conference room along with a paste-up laser print of your boss's face, but if your coworkers read your blog and you refer to your female higher-up's mustache... You could be fired. The article concludes with a quote from the now unemployed blogger in question: "Ten years ago, someone would never get fired for their blog. This is such a sign of the times."

Ok, ten years ago perhaps someone would never get fired for their blog, but Zenner is hardly breaking new ground here. Let's remember local blogger and former Microsoft contractor Michael Hanscom, fired for posting a picture and entry about a pallet of Mac G5s arriving on the Redmond campus in 2003. It's not quite the ten years that Zenner was hoping for, but now it's nearly five years ago which has to be like two or three geologic ages in blog time. Internet historians can jump back to 2003 and read Michael's offending post here, his "I'm famous for getting fired" post here , the follow-up to the follow up here, and Todd Bishop's account in the P-I here. That's him in the picture up there, and although he probably wants to leave the events of 2003 in the past, we salute him, and, in fact, we'll probably join him and newcomer to the field Jessica Zenner as soon as these hairy-faced frumps figure out what we're up to over here.