Robert Farley

By Keith K. Klassiks (klassiks) | klassiks@mailandnews.com | Vienna Strasse/7645

We’re turning the tables for this edition of Zineterview to “interrogate” Vienna Online chief editor Robert Farley, who answers some of the questions that he has grown especially fond of asking! His expressive replies have made this a zineterview of record length. A veteran newsman, Robert has put his experience to good use in this publication ( if you like it, be sure to tell him so! ). Always friendly and cheerful, Robert is a long-time liaison and CL with a great sense of humor that will surely amuse.

CL Robert and wife Debbie @ ’97 ROTC military ball

User Name(s) by which you are known in GC: cl_kaulana
Real Name (at your discretion): Robert Farley
Birthday/Age: April 1 (no fooling), 1954, making me 45 at this writing
Vocation and/or School Situation: Part-time administrative assistant at a large farm, looking to get into some Microsoft/Novell certification/training
Geographical Location: Oahu, Hawaii
Family (ie spouse, kids, and/or parents, siblings, significant pets): wife Debbie, dog Missy, cat Whiskers
URL(s): Strasse 7000
Email Addy: cl_kaulana@yahoo.com
Neighborhood(s) you are a CL in: Vienna
Favorite Composer: Mozart
Favorite Composition: And You and I — Not really classical, but classic rock, by Yes. I don't have a favorite classical music composition.
Instruments You Play: guitar (very well), electric bass, mandolin, violin, piano, drums, harmonica, (all badly), anything with strings or keys or that you can hit or kick
Favorite Instrument (whether you play it or not): Bongo drums

Keith: Welcome to the Zineterview, Robert. I’m probably going to ask about the same questions as you do, so don’t be too surprised. Let’s start with the usual: When did you become a GeoCities homesteader?
Robert: September 1997. I used to have the day written down, but I remember it was sunny and we were living in Arizona at the time and I had free Internet access that kept kicking me off.

K: I don’t know why, but it seems that all the good memories happen on sunny days. Anyway, what do you like best about GeoCities?
R: The sense of community, the helping atmosphere, the ease of creating a site were what initially attracted me. My favorite part about it right now is editing Vienna Online, and trying to find more people to contribute and participate. I worked in newspapers in Ohio for the better part of 12 years, and I enjoyed laying out pages, writing, taking pictures, and editing.

K: Your 12 years in journalism certainly qualifies you to run this e-zine. You've been a photographer, a reporter and an editor, so you must have seen it all. What are the best parts about a career in journalism, and what advice would you give to aspiring writers and journalists?
R: If you like to write and take pictures of what’s going on around you, then journalism could be for you. Of course, there are times when the people you’re writing about won’t want you there, or will want to control what you do. If you’re in a small town, like I was, then it can get uncomfortable because you see these people in stores, etc. In a big city, it may not be such a consideration, more anonymity. There are lots of areas inside the newsroom that a person can go to: photography has its own department, the printing or press department, the advertising department, and my personal favorite, the editors.

Robert in the office where he’s “supposed to be working.” ( Alright, get back to work. =) )

K: One of the best slogans in the newspapering business that I’ve heard goes “First we kill all the editors.” How much truth is there in that?
R: Well, yes, many reporters feel that way when they see what happened to the story that they sweated blood for, should the story have to be shortened or cut altogether. Sometimes something that is big new right now is not news by the time the deadline rolls around. Something else has happened to bump it. But usually, especially in the small town situation I was in, every story gets used eventually.

K: What made you decide to become a CL (and liaison) and how long have you been one? What's the most enjoyable thing about being a CL?
R: I have an insatiable need to force-feed my opinions on the unsuspecting masses. :o) Actually, I had some time on my hands, wanted to learn how to use the computer better, figured out a lot through the original HelpChat, from that decided I could do the leader thing. Plus I wanted free GeoPlus. In those days, we only had three megs of space. I think GeoPlus was 11 or something. I became a CL in March 1998 and a liaison sometime later.

K: I can still remember the days when we had only 3 Megs too. Nowadays most of us have too much space to count! What would you tell someone who can’t decide whether or not to become a CL?
R: Be decisive. :o) Seriously, first of all, of course, you need to know how to help. If you’ve built a decent homestead, if you’re a wiz with the PageBuilder, if you know your way around the massive thing we call Yahoo!GeoCities, and if you genuinely want to help others, those are the basic requirements. If you have time and initiative to be involved with other activities — articles for the zine, ideas for and time to help run games, chats, and message boards — that’s something most hoods really need, too.

K: Very sound advice. If you were allowed to run Y!GeoCities, what key changes would you like to make?
R: 1) I’d make me the president and CEO, with a tidy raise in pay every month. 2) Barring that, I’d thoroughly check every new thing before releasing it to the public. 3) I would release said new thing on a Monday so that homesteaders wouldn’t experience outages and problems on the weekend, when it is almost impossible to get any support from Y!G. 4) I’d help each neighborhood set up a helpchat with their CLs — or maybe all CLs — such that those who need help could go to a club to see who from their community was online and message that person for help. 5) I’d put HelpChat back on its feet. Yahoo Chat Help is okay, but it’s chat help, not helpchat. I don’t need my sentences to flow with color, I need to be able to cut through the gristle and get to the meat. Barring that, see number 4. 6) I’d clean up the dead links, dead ends, and roundabouts that are rampant in GC now. The GeoPlus site is an example. Just signing in is another example. 7) I’d make it possible to update the hood main and adjacent pages so that misspellings and dead links could be fixed without need of an amendment to the Constitution. It’s just a web page, for crying out loud. 8) Then, I’d make a prominent link to GeoCities on the Yahoo entrance page to display the pride I have in my GeoCities affiliate.

K: Wow. That would have made me vote for you, if they had an election to choose the Y!GeoCities bigshots! Err...with the possible exception of point 1. =)
The big mess caused by the merger with Yahoo! finally seems to be clearing a little, and there are lots of exciting things just waiting to happen. What do you think Y!GeoCities will come up with for the new year?
R: I hope they take a close look at 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 above. (CLs can do 4 themselves.) Other than that, I think they are going to get a little closer to redefining the role of the community leader. I predict even more space for homesteads, a new and improved Page Builder, and I think the clubs are going to evolve into something really useful. I look for the GeoCities Neighborhood Chat Rooms to be deleted because hardly anyone is using them. I know they’re hard to find, but they’ve never gotten a lot of use.

K: What other GeoCities activities are you active in?
R: The Welcoming Committee for Vienna. I get a lot of feedback from people through that, and also try to steer them to their own CLs. I edit Vienna Online, take care of most of the community resource pages, I’m trying to be involved with the clubs stuff, nothing really official, though.

K: All that must keep you quite busy. What do you think makes a good website?
R: Graphics, lots and lots of graphics, preferably animated, preferably with that Java thing that makes water ripples. Yeah. Imagine that happening a dozen times on the same page. Just KIDDING! Theme, design, planning, reasonably fast loading time, tasteful use of graphics and sound. I like pictures, but not big pictures, pictures of the people who made the site. A little voyeuristic, maybe, but to me, that's interesting.

K: So, what’ll you be doing, five years down the road? What about your site?
R: In December 2004, I would really like to be counting the money I made from my first year on the Senior PGA Tour. (That’s Professional Golf Association, for the sports challenged.) Just in case that doesn't happen, I would like to be ensconced in some terrific computer engineering job — preferably self-employed — where I have lots of time to work on my website and my golf because I’ve done such a great job putting so many companies’ computer systems together. By then, I hope my site has become a landmark in GeoCities, as it will be on its 50th revision, most likely. Well, maybe the 20th revision. It’s on its fifth major one right now.

K: I’ll root for you if you ever get into the PGA. Don’t forget me when you’re counting the money! =) Now, let’s take one of your favorite questions a little further. What would someone never suspect about you in a million years? How about a billion? =)
R: That’s tough. If you knew me 15 years ago, you would never have guessed I’d wind up where I am now or that I wouldn’t have any tattoos or body piercings. Knowing me now, you’d never guess I was once a rock and roll guitarist in a bunch of garage and condemned building bands, or that my hair was once almost down to my elbows. I’m a contradiction in terms in many ways. I hate sloppiness, yet I am a slob. I don’t like laziness, yet I have a hard time getting motivated sometimes. In a billion? How about the fact that I don’t always pay attention to what I wear or how I wear it? I’ve twice gone to the golf course and played several holes with my shirt on wrong-side-out. I thought there was something strange with the way my pick-up partners were always smiling when they looked my direction!

K: Long hair probably isn’t that bad. I’m going to “forget” to go to the barbershop till school re-opens. =) So, what are some of your hobbies? Any achievements you’d like to share?
R: Just about everything is a hobby to me. Right now, golf is at the top, computer stuff closely behind (though I spend more time on the computer than on golf, sometimes playing computer golf), playing my old Yamaha acoustic. We’re playing Gex Gecko on our PlayStation right now, too. I also have been known to hike, mountain bike, rollerblade, play tennis, snorkel, body board, throw Frisbee, play chess, read, watch TV and movies, garden, paint, sketch, walk the dog, and write music, songs, and poetry. As for achievements, hmmm. I guess the only thing that really comes to mind that means anything is accepting Jesus Christ as my savior. I did it late in life, just about nine years ago actually. Totally changed my way of thinking, view on life, myself, and the rest of the world — all for the better, mind you. I have had the best times of my life since then. And I’ve realized that, looking back, I squandered so many chances to improve my lot in life, but that’s all water under the bridge. I would like to have a time machine to go back and have a really good talk with the me of the 70s and 80s.

K: It has been said that religion is a great motivator — no doubt you have been motivated to change for the better. It’s something that’s never too late to do! =)
But on the lighter side, don’t you have some golf scores that you’re particularly proud of? The best I did in golf was to (correctly) choose a putter for use on the green, and that was on a computer, mind you! How about you?
R: LOL, Dude, the last half-round I played, I birdied the last hole. I’m still relishing the memory, in fact, and haven’t been back to play since. Smacked a powerful, straight drive some 250 yards, a 200-yard three-wood to the fringe on the green, then a 15-foot putt along a downhill side slope that curved right into the hole. As my Jack Nicklaus computer game guy says, “This game is easy!” Unfortunately, the rest of the nine holes wasn’t that classic, but I did shoot a 45, which is a hot or so better than average for me.

K: Besides playing golf and tennis, are you into spectator sports? Football? Baseball?
R: I also like to watch golf and tennis, and now and then football, baseball, and basketball, especially during playoff season.

K: What’s the best thing about living in Hawaii? Sunny all year round sounds better than the rainy season that we’re having here in Singapore.
R: I miss a good thunderstorm, though, being from the Midwest. It seems like there’s always a sunny place somewhere on the island. The beaches are nice, the year-round golf weather is cool, the only negative for me is the humidity. Some don’t like the isolation, but that’s no problem for me. There’s a lot of cultural diversity here, too, being in the middle of the Pacific, which is about halfway from everywhere, the US mainland, the Far East, Australia, South America.

K: If I ever get a chance to visit Hawaii, what are some of the sights I shouldn’t miss?
R: I only have experience on Oahu, but here you should hike up and around Diamond Head, bicycle around Kaene Point, walk through Waikiki at dusk, see the North Shore waves in winter, visit Haleiwa Town, Hanauma Bay State Preserve, Ala Moana Mall, Ko Olina Bay, Waimea Bay, and you should rent some snorkel gear and do some of that. If you can stick to a body board or surfboard, there’s that, too.

K: What’re you going to be doing this New Year? Going to join in the downtown countdown?
R: No plans yet. We’ll probably stay home and watch movies, listen to the noise outside as people set off fire crackers, and watch to see that the wooden shingles on our house don’t catch fire.

K: One last one, Robert. As the Editor-in-chief, what do you think of the Vienna Online?
R: I like it. You and Florian are doing a great job keeping the classical and the Vienna in it, and now and then somebody else will offer something to offset the fact that I know hardly anything about classical music. It’s nice to be able to continue to write and edit and lay out pages. Not to re-turn the tables, you're an aspiring journalist, are you not? What do you think of the progress?

K: I think we’re very much on the upswing, if you ask me. Well, thanks very much for your time, Robert, and your editorial efforts ( it’s a little unconventional to include formatting in your replies, but thanks anyway! ). I’m sure we all look forward to many more exciting issues of the Vienna Online.

Keith (klassiks) can’t understand why there’s such a big fuss over the year 2000. His computer is still working, and he doesn’t worry much as long as he can do his CL work, hand in his copy on time and work on his site at Vienna Strasse/7645. Now going on 17, he looks forward to life in junior college.