It's really been great having my mom's sister, Wilhelmina, here this week. She's been going through boxes of my mom's photos and telling us lots of fun stories. The kind every family has in its background.

Last night, however, the stories turned to World War II and the holocaust. I had heard some of these stories before, but I was interested in hearing them again.

As you might know, my mom is German. She was born in 1940 and lived near the Black Forest in southwestern Germany near the Swiss border.

My mom's sister (we call her Purzel, which is a nickname she received from her father who called her "my little Purzelie" — it stands for doing a summersault, she had tumbled and was laughing instead of crying) told us about how her mom (my grandmother) had stood up to the Nazis and had faced scorn from her family. How did she do that?

Well, every German family who had four or more children was given a medal for bearing children for the "fatherland."

My mom's mom publicly denied that medal several times telling officials "I bear my children for God, not for Hitler." Purzel told us that my grandmother even forced the mayor of her town to come to her home and offer the medal to her, and further rebuffed his attempts. By then she had added an economic component onto her denials, pointing to the small pile of coal she, and other families in their communities, had to heat her home and said something like "when you get all of us enough coal to heat our homes then you can come back here and offer that medal to me again."

Now, in today's world that doesn't seem to be very dangerous speech, but then Purzel added some context to the story.

My grandfather was one of the first in his communities to witness the atrocities personally. He told my grandmother that he had seen Jewish people being forced to dig their own graves and then being forced to shoot each other. Long before those stories were officially known.

He was later arrested for speaking out about this in Switzerland (he was released because not every Nazi was a bad Nazi, Purzel told us, and one of the nice ones stood up for my grandfather saying "Mr. Bolanz would never say such things" and released him).

So, telling the mayor of your town (among other officials) to go pound sand was very dangerous and could have caused grave consequences to come down on the family.

Her decision caused a split in the family and in the community that never was healed. Some family members never forgave her for putting them in danger. Community friends never talked with her again after that.

Last night we talked with Purzel about how that experience had changed her outlook (she and my mom were only a few years old during the war, but what happened then has caused deep beliefs in both of them, which today get passed along to the next generations as stories). She is very anti-military. She told when she visited Israel that she wouldn't even go into a military elevator, which astonished her hosts. She also has very little national pride.

She said my grandfather would never speak with her about the war because she said he had been heartbroken. He saw his country do horrible things.

Purzel didn't know I was going to blog these stories. We were just talking as a family. She wanted to make sure we never forgot and was pleading with us to fight against misuse of power, particularly military power, and particularly against minorities.

She can't understand why these kinds of human atrocities still go on even to this day.

Me neither, Purzel, me neither.

Dwight Silverman, of the Houston Chronicle, says shame on Microsoft for calling the publishing mechanism inside the new URGE music service and Windows Media Player 11 (which otherwise is getting good reviews around blogs this morning) "blogs."

I agree with Dwight.

What made blogging better than Web sites? Five things.

1) Ease of publishing.
2) Discoverability. (Pings weblogs.com or technorati or another ping server).
3) Conversationality. (Trackbacks or as-they-happen referer logs, or now being part of Technorati and other blog search engines).
4) Linkability. (All posts should have permalinks).
5) Syndicatability. (All content should be available in RSS feeds).

If you don't have those five, you shouldn't call your stuff a blog. Especially if I can't link to it from here.

Awesome. One Microsoft team heard my pleas for clean XHTML. By the way, the new Word 2007 has the ability to post to blogs built in. Joe Friend has been writing about it.

Lots of Microsoft program managers push back and say "normal people don't care about HTML quality."

That might be true (although we all hate it when our pages don't display right on all browsers, or when they are slow to load) but the influentials who write reviews and tell their friends (or set up their computers) do care about such things.

One guy told me "but we have 10s of millions of users already, so why should we care?"

Well, you woulda had 10,000,001 if you had clean HTML.

Hey, Fred, can you give me some advice? (Read his post to understand that that's how he says to start a conversation with a venture capitalist).

Heheh, fresh meat!

Microsoft has been making some great hires lately (here News.com reports on our hiring of a data-mining pioneer, Rakesh Agrawal), which means I have some great new interview candidates for Channel 9 when I get back.

Welcome Rakesh! Can't wait to see what you do.

Over at TechCrunch land I see a lot of people are calling Mike Arrington a jerk for how he dealt with a designer. ValleyWag has the timeline.

A few thoughts.

1) This is why I do my own design. And I've been derided for that decision too. But, it's ugly. And it's mine. And I don't need to deal with anyone else's hurt feelings if someone calls my design wacky or ugly.
2) I immediately sent Mike Arrington an email when he emailed the design around to a group of his friends and said it sucked. Why? Cause it didn't work on my mobile phone. I hope he fixes that soon. Dave Winer's design is great for mobile phones, by the way. I know a lot of bloggers who read other people's blogs on mobile phones (at Northern Voice almost half the bloggers there said that they read blogs on phones at least occassionally).
3) I really hate the way people deal with each other on blog comments. Going ad hominem just sucks. It's far stronger just to argue ideas and not get personal. But, that's just me.
4) Over on CrunchNotes I sense a lot of jealousy for the position Mike now holds. (He's #1 on the Share your OPML site, for instance). The thing is, I've seen how hard Mike works to get his blog out there and done. Hey, Mike, I know how hard you work on your blog and I really appreciate it. While in the hospital I've been looking for a blog that comes close to watching the Silicon Valley geek industry and I haven't found one that comes close.

Anyway, it sucks having dirty laundry waving in the wind for everyone to see, but it's part of blogging. Not fun part, for sure, but I'll gladly trade places with anyone having a bit of blogging trouble this week.

Jeremy Waggstaff, a Wall Street Journal columnist, talks about my experiences getting pitched by PR people while my mom is terminally ill.

I don't mind getting pitched. It's how I'll come out with something new to say that TechCrunch or Dave Winer won't have on their blogs. Please do tell me about the cool new software you're writing. Or the cool new iPod you're designing. Or the Second Life experience you're having.

But, demonstrate to me you read my blog and I'll be far far more likely to be interested in you. See, this is human nature. I gravitate toward people who like me and away from people who don't like me. Most people I've met in my travels behave like that.

Which brings me to the next point. A reader of mine, Todd Kenck, introduced me to John O'Donnell, who runs the TechRanch, which is a place that helps technology ventures get started in Montana. So, we're gonna meet there at 11 a.m. on Thursday in Bozeman. Then I'll be in Billings, MT on Thursday night.

Anyone else wanna meet up those two times? Or on Friday morning in Billings? Let me know and we'll get it together.

Thanks to my mom for getting me to visit this community. It's nice to be able to hang out with geeks during this time. I can't even imagine what families did before Wifi or cell modems and PCs. Watching a parent sleep in their final days is mighty boring.

Create your own personalized mashups with MapCruncher. Lots of fun to play with.

The love started with the purchase of a $125 adding machine. Barbara and George Keremedjiev bought it at a flea market without knowing what it was. They quickly learned and kept buying adding machines and later computers. Most of the time they got really interesting things for free because so many items were being thrown out.

Today that collection has turned into the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana.

Last time I visited this museum it was in the early 1990s. It now is in a new storefront in a strip mall. But it is no less thrilling.

It's interesting to contrast the museum with the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. That one is probably 150 times the size with many many times the budget. But I like this museum better in a few ways. I think it's a bit more educational. It certainly is more intimate. They focus more on the people behind the machines rather than just the machines themselves. And because it's in a major tourist zone (if you are driving from the West Coast to Yellowstone you probably will pass through here — Bozeman is about 1.5 hours from Yellowstone's northern border) they get a different audience than the Silicon Valley one gets.

I'm sitting here on the floor, there aren't many visitors today, and I'm talking with Barbara. They just reopened after a few weeks preparing their new exhibit on Samuel Morse and the telegraph.

What do I notice? Is the love and attention to detail. And the personal stories of things they've collected. Unfortunately my cell phones are giving me fits (GPRS isn't working well here for me) so I'll have to wait until next week to get my photos up, but this is a do NOT miss.

Oh, and Steve Wozniak has been here twice and donated an Apple I to the museum.

Thanks so much to Charles Torre and Duncan Mackenzie for filling in and taking over my Channel 9 video duties while I tend to my mom. She's doing well, by the way, and is just slightly more alert than in past days (albeit getting more and more tired).

An interesting video they threw up is one I did with the Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere team. If you're a developer this technology will let you create new kinds of applications that are very hard to create with existing tech. Another cool video is the one Charles did with the InfoCard team. That's a way to build in identity to your applications.

My coworkers have really been great through this process. I have a much deeper appreciation for them that I'll try to repay.

I'm gonna take a couple of hours to visit the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, today. I'll write to you from there in a little while. But it was nice to see the Montana Jones blog sending some nice thoughts to me! Anyone wanna do a blogger dinner or lunch while we're here?

What's funny is that ever since writing about not seeing much tech in Montana I've been getting asked computer questions. Just goes to show, you better watch what you ask for!

Thanks for the moment of silence and thanks to Eric Norlin for standing in for me. David Weinberger has the report. Much appreciated!

The night before I left to see my mom I got a new HD-DVD player. The Toshiba one. My review matches almost exactly the review that was in the Washington Post. This is a toy that only the early-adopter types should get. Although, damn, does it have a nice picture!

I don't mind the qualms about the remote (it is damn big) and the slow startup times, though. I really don't care about those two things. I only use DVD's for movies, so never fast-forward or reverse or things like that.

It's expensive, though. $500. And hard to find in stores.

I think most people will wait to get one with their video game console. Xbox 360 will have a HD player available around the end of the year and PlayStation 3 will have a BlueRay player built in if you spend the $599 for their package that comes with it and HDMI (which gives you better quality on an HDTV).

These are pricy toys, but only really necessary if you buy an HD Screen. Average prices on those are around $3,000.

So far I'm happy about my purchase and Maryam says she's been watching regular DVD movies on it and happy too (unlike the cheaper players we tried last week it doesn't skip or freeze on dirty rental disks).

I'm so happy we got my mom's sister here in time to see my mom. She came all the way from Germany. They are so sweet together. Instantly I could tell there was a bond that was deeper than any other that's come through the room I'm spending time with mom in tonight.

Christian Long said it perfectly: I do have a mother that I love dearly.

I just wish I didn't have to be reminded of that love quite the way I've been reminded in the past week.

Hat's off to all the mother's around the world! Oh, and Susan Kitchens has some excellent questions to ask your mom if you still have time left to do so.

Here's hoping that this week is better than last.

I've been thinking about the 53,651 people who read TechCrunch. What, you missed that whole meme that passed through the tech blogs this past week?

Rick Segal wrote about the meme and said it's the paying customers that matter.

Well, for the past five days I've been hanging out with folks who don't read TechCrunch. Maybe that's my mom's gift to me. Get me outside the Silicon Valley or Puget Sound bubbles.

So, I've been thinking about what it'll take to get these folks to try something new. Hey, the iPod still hasn't gotten here, so don't even ask about podcasting, RSS, or tagging. Interestingly enough, blogging has been heard about here. One older lady who visited my mom saw that I was blogging and she said "oh, blogs are the things that's keeping the media honest."

Heh. The things that get heard here in a small town in middle America.

But, back to the lesson. How do we get things out to these people? Well, for one, we need wide-spread wifi here first. Google hasn't set up a Wifi network here in Livingston. That's a business opportunity. Second, there aren't signs extoling the Internet here. I haven't seen a URL on anything in days. I haven't seen an iPod poster in days. I haven't seen a Fry's in days. It's almost like geeks don't exist. Although there is a killer computer museum in Bozeman (I'll try to visit that this week too).

Thomas Hawk wrote about this issue. He taught people to Flickr in New Orleans.

Oh, damn you Thomas. Now you've made it 53,652. Heheh!

Like I said, how do you cause an avalanche? One snowflake at a time. One snowflake at a time.

It's amazing how many product pitches I've received in the past few days. Even in phone calls. Do they not read my blog? Do they have no clue what's happened in my life in the past five days?

Apparently not.

I'm sad I'm not going to Syndicate. I'd like to ask Richard Edelman about why PR folks are sometimes so clueless.

Now, keep in mind, not all are.

Frank Shaw, Vice President of Waggener Edstrom, demonstrated his clued-in behavior by sending me a very nice note. Not that he needed to demonstrate that again. He's proven that he is clued in many, many times before. I guess that's how you get to be vice president at a major PR firm instead of just a lackey paid to smile-and-dial.

But, in today's world of search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati, Feedster, and others, it just isn't good to be clued out.

I don't know what to do about it. Other than to turn down free stuff. And not write about such jerks' products or companies. It's amazing how much free stuff I've been offered since I told the world I'm not going to accept it anymore.

The good PR folks can call me anytime. After all, I wrote a book with one. Oh, wait, he doesn't like being called a PR guy. Says he's retired from that business. Oh, yeah, Shel, you're the best, and you just don't wanna be associated with the bad ones. Me neither.

Boy, has PR changed since we have the ability to share our lives in real time with the world? You bet it has.

You also now understand how Microsoft got such bad PR. We forgot that PR is done one relationship at a time. I wonder now how many press releases we sent to journalists who were sitting with mothers who were dying?

How is blogging changing PR? One mother at a time. Heh!

Dave Winer called me tonight and we had a nice chat about families and parents and all that. In the middle of the conversation a long train rumbled past. "The Internet is here" I told Dave. My end was being held in front of the Chop House, which is an excellent restaurant in Livingston.

He didn't quite understand until I explained it to him. See, the Internet is powered by electricity. What, you think those data centers at Yahoo and Google and MSN don't require much power? Think again. In fact, Google is planting its data centers near power sources because they require so much power.

So, when a train loaded with coal rumbled past, the first thing I thought of was that coal was going to power some of our Internet.

Of course I took a picture.

I told Dave that the railroad is a big deal here in Livingston. I know train buffs (they call them rail spotters, or if you really are a train buff, a "flimsie") come from around the world to watch the trains go over the Bozeman pass between Livingston and Bozeman, Montana. It's one of the most scenic train crossings in the world. Tomorrow I might follow a train or two and try to capture a picture as four, or six, electromotive engines pull a mile-long train over the pass.

It's an awesome sight to watch. The sheer physics are amazing.

Are any of you train fans? What draws you to watching trains? I think that's something I picked up from my ex-boss, Steve Sloan. When I worked for him he wrote a newsletter, named "Flimsies." Today he has a train page, although much of that doesn't seem to link up anymore. I'm sad, cause he had some really great photos of trains all over the Western United States.

But I think my love of trains goes back to the Lionel set that Uncle Victor gave our family when I was young. I still remember setting that up and driving it so fast that it flipped off of the tracks. Weird what we remember from when we were young.

Anyway, tomorrow I hope to catch a train after I take my brother to the airport. Even as I type this I hear a train horn in the distance. I wonder what's on it? Toys? Cars? Oil? Or more coal?

No, this situation isn't about sitting with my mom this Mother's day.

You see, my mom shared one thing with me: the love of the outdoors. So, since Maryam had to go home today I wanted to make sure she experienced Yellowstone National Park.

So, yesterday we drove into the park. She was amazed. Couldn't believe that wildlife would walk within yards of people. I took her to Mammoth Hotsprings. My mom had taken me there a few times before.

Eventually we got to Norris Geysers. It smells there. Really.

Think about what would happen if 100 people would fart in an elevator. That comes close to the smell you'll experience at Norris and other places in Yellowstone.

See, the hot water that comes out of the ground brings with it Hydrogen Sulfide. It smells. Like rotten eggs. Or farts.

Norris is one of those places you'll probably see on Discovery Channel. If you have an HDTV I'm sure it'll be pretty interesting to watch, but HDTV won't bring you that smell. It must be experienced.

Why go there? Well, the geyers are interesting to watch. And the colors that form in the water streaming from the geyers are brilliant. My little cell phone camera doesn't do justice.

It seemed to be a good place to spend the afternoon. The only thing really smelly about it was my mom wasn't there. I might go back this week and sit on this bench and take it all in again.

My mom loved this place. She lived only an hour away.

I wish you all could experience the smell without experiencing the stinky situation. Heck, I wish that for myself.

Oh, by the way, Eric Rice wrote a beautiful thing about mothers this morning. He wrote "And never has it been so worth it to cry this much before noon."

P.S., my mom is doing as well as can be. She is a bit more alert. She recognizes people as they walk in (she has SO MANY friends here). Her sister arrived last night and they have had some very touching moments together. My mom strokes her hair and looks at her. Unfortunately there's not much else of my mom there to connect with. Funny thing, she picked up my business card and stared at it for quite a while. Ever since then we've brought her pictures and other things to look at.

As for me, it's a tough thing to go through. But, I'm trying to see the good parts in it and there are many. Even though it indeed, is a stinky situation. Much like the color in the geyser water below the smell.

At Microsoft we often talk about "the community." You know, when we have news to get out, or initatives to build, or conferences to attend.

Today Mark Cuban, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, among other things, says that blogging is personal.

Oh, yes it is, yes it is.

But I'm learning about community in a whole new way. Through firefighters who knew my mom through her store (and the same guys drove my mom on the three-hour-drive from Livingston to Billings and back again). Through church members who shared with me that part of my mom's life. Through customers in her store.

I've been forced to join a community I wouldn't otherwise join this week. It's interesting to see just what my mom meant to a community I didn't otherwise know.

The community of Livingston, Montana is an interesting one. When my mom arrived here in the late 1980s the community had been devastated by layoffs at the local rail yard. The community here was dying. People were moving away. Community members tell me that my mom's store helped spark a return of the community. Folks have been coming through here all day telling stories. (She owned a religious bookstore in Livingston).

As I looked around my mom's house this morning I realized that I got many of my values from her. The biggest thing in her home is a huge picture of the Statue of Liberty. This is no mistake. My mom loved her freedom. She wanted to live life the way she wanted to, damn the consequences.

It's why we drifted apart. I didn't get her community. She didn't get mine. Although we both respected each other's community (as I've learned this week, cause she was always bragging about me to her friends).

She also worked hard. She got that from her parents who ran a restaurant in Germany. She also cared about the people she served. Her sign in her store said "you are cherished." And it was obvious from the stories that her customers told me that she did, indeed, live those words.

It's something that I am thinking about a lot. I've been reading blogs while my mom is asleep and I realize just how much you all mean to me and what an interesting little community we've built.

It's also why I reject the whole "numbers game." It's screwed from the get go.

How do you get a million people to do business with you? One at a time.

Dave Winer is right. Saying that 53,651 don't matter is nutty. They are the ones that'll convince the rest of the world that something is worth paying attention to.

Already my blog has gained a whole bunch of people this week that didn't know what a blog was. Family members, friends, customers of my mom's.

Welcome to my community. I appreciate your friendship and support a lot.

And, if you wanna blog your thoughts, just ask how, we'll get you started.

To everyone else, what stunningly beautiful country it is up here. I'll try to post pictures but cell phone coverage is shaky at best (my mom's house is so remote that GPRS signals don't reach it). Update: my mom's house is the brown one in the picture here. The photo of Emigrant mountain is what greeted us out her windows this morning.

I've also decided not to go to Syndicate and really appreciate Eric Norlin and his team's support.

We were trying to be tough. I walked to the hotel from the hospital. What was in my hand? My SmartPhone. I was reading your comments. I read a few, probably 20 or 30, and started crying, so I called my son, and that didn't help much.

Met up with my brothers for dinner. That was OK. We told each other stories and argued about politics. Then we decided to go bowling. My brother Alex likes to bowl for some reason. Sounded better than going to the hotel room or to my mom's room.

It was fun enough, but then I started looking at my phone again and reading your comments and started crying. We met some great people who helped raise our spirts a bunch (you can see their photos here, I didn't get their names, but seeing them have a good time helped a lot).

Thanks so much everyone for the support. You have no idea how much it means to me just to know other people are out there thinking about this situation.

Makes me realize that everyone should have this kind of support when they go through tough situations. And, reading my comments, I realize that everyone will probably have to go through something similar sometime in their life.

When I was walking out the doctors apologized. You know, those people are really special. Dealing with the worst times of a family's life is not easy. To every doctor out there, my hat is off to you tonight. Thanks for being there and thanks for doing your best. It is appreciated.

One last thing before I go to sleep. I have the best coworkers in the world. I've been getting kind notes and phone calls all day. Those will never be forgotten.

Are we in a global village? Yes. Tonight I met some people who live in a small town in Montana. I feel like I live in a small villiage in the world. There's even a thread on Channel 9 about this.

OK, I'm crying again. Gotta go. I can't wait until Maryam gets here (she's flying in on Friday).

By the way, while I'm thinking of it, might as well write down my wishes. If I have a chance to look at a screen and comprehend what it says, keep me alive. Otherwise please don't perform heroic measures to keep me alive.

I'd rather be kept alive only if there's some chance of a decent quality of life.

How about you? What would you like your family to do? Why don't you write it down and tell them? Tonight.

Staring at my mom's respirator makes me realize that every breath is precious. What would you do differently if you had only 1,000 breaths to take?

Regarding my mom, I spent a lot of time with her and told her we're taking her home.

She squeezed my hand when I told her that. She doesn't comprehend much, but I really hope she can get home again to see her house. It's a stunningly beautiful house in Emigrant, MT. She had it custom built. I wish I could take you all there, it's on some of the most beautiful land that exists on this earth.

Go and hug your family. It sounds so stupid to say that usually, but then you go through something like this and you realize that that's about all you have.

Thanks also to my boss for calling and reminding me, once again, to get off of the computer. The thing is, the computer is a calming influence and keeps you up to date with everyone else. Just now an email message came in from her sister, who lives in Germany. I'm very glad I have my cell phones and my Verizon card. They are my lifelines at this point.

Anyway, I can't wait until I get back to talking about normal stuff like how Windows Vista is going, or what Office Live's feature set will be. Calling relatives and/or friends of my mom and telling them that bad news isn't fun.

That reminds me, make sure your family members know who to call in case of an emergency like this. My mom seemed healthy until she checked herself into a hospital. Even then she seemed like everything was OK.

It's time to have the talk with your family members. It's morbid, I know, but it is important. We don't get to choose how to exit this world, but we can prepare our loved ones for the choices they'll have to make.

OK, I'm crying again. Time to try to get some sleep. It's gonna be a long day tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone for putting up with this blogging. It's helpful to me and I get phone calls from people who are touched by it (and family members). If it bugs you, you might avoid my blog until next week.

In the meantime, we appreciate your kind thoughts. It does help us get through this a lot. I hope I can repay this debt someday. I hope everyone has this kind of support when they go through a tough situation like this.