Story Archive - March 2008

Laying out the Cards (03/30/2008)

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died. - Stephen Wright

"How long has it been since you've done one of these?" she asks me. "For myself, probably around a year. For someone else? I can't even remember."

I am always embarrassed to do readings in public, but I'm not ready to be anywhere private with her. We sit outside in PA and I start my standard spiel about the cards. It's meant to stimulate your thought and help think about your state in life and choices you want to make. Cards don't predict the future. Everyone starts with the spiel. Overall she is a good querent. I don't know her very well, but we talk through each flip and she plays with ideas about what each card could mean as much as I do. A few people notice and casually sit nearby and are trying to listen. She picks up some of the repetitive symbols of the cards quickly, "white lilies? That's innocent thought, right?" She interprets things as sunny with choices between happy paths. I smile for her. She buys me a cup of coffee.

Three weeks have passed since I read her cards and I've been doing weekly readings for myself on no particular topic just seeing where my mind wanders. I take photos and ship them over along with my analysis. She is extremely interested in it and that is always fun to have.

The last few readings have kicked my ass. Two weeks ago I was covered by the five of cups. One week ago I was covered by Death. Tonight I flipped the first card and to see the Tower and just started laughing. I mean, seriously. I know exactly how I would read that progression for someone else. "You're failing to find joy in something you think should bring it to you. You are planning to make a change to something important in your life. That change is coming whether you want it or not and it will be painful." Whatever. Keep the peace.

Save the Cheerleader (03/27/2008)

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. - Winston Churchill (sorta)

I was out for an after-work drink with my former CTO who asked me the question, "what's next for you?" He and a few other of my closest work friends have recently left the company with great fanfare and he's of the mind set that everyone has an exit plan. I don't. Honestly. I really do want to be that person who has been working somewhere for twenty years and saw the company through the good times and the bad.

Still, it got me to thinking: what's next for me, assuming there is a next for me? A three month vacation. Assuming I stay as burned out as I am, I will need three months to sit back and sip in life. Then what? As I was lost in though he also asked me, "are you a good technologist?" I said yes without question. I am very smart and I am very driven and I have exerted my smarts and my drive towards the technical industry for the last decade. Do I stay?

"I just want to save the world." We chuckle, but I mean it. "I've been talking with a friend at a non-profit. He suggesting I be a state lobbyist at his company for environmental concerns." He chuckles more. "I don't see you working outside of technology."

Still, the idea intrigues me. When I worked with Hallmark helping to support electronic cards I would tell people, "every card we help get through is a smile. It's a bit of happiness we're spreading." Right now, I'm not making the world a better place and I know it and I feel it. I am making some of my coworkers lives a lot better than they would be if I weren't there. That makes me happy. The cost is high.

So that's what I'm thinking about for what is next for me. Something in a non-profit. Something that makes me think at the end of the week, whether I work forty hours for eighty hours, that the world is a good place and I am happy to be a part of it.

We Are All Rockstars (03/20/2008)

I bet you don't hate us as much as we hate you. - Johnny Rotten

Last year I took time to construct a playlist called "The Rock." It was quickly followed by a playlist called "The Metal." On New Years, while listening to these lists, we all realized that we were missing "The Punk." So we took our time, thought through the options and constructed our list. It took me nearly three months to actually get all the songs, but get them I did. Than, to my sadness, I discovered our glorious list was only fifty minutes long. What's up with you punk bands making short songs? Okay. I need another half an hour of The Punk!

1. The Sex Pistols - Pretty Vacant
2. The Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the U.K.
3. Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia
4. The Clash - London Calling
5. Billy Idol - Rebel Yell
6. The Damned - Neat, Neat, Neat
7. Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen in Love
8. Minor Threat - Out of Step
9. Wire - Ex Lion Tamer
10. Joy Division - Warsaw
11. Black Flag - Rise Above
12. Devo - Gut Feeling
13. Mission of Burma - 2wice
14. Adolescents - Kids of the Black Hole
15. Stiff Little Fingers - Suspect Device
16. The Dead Boys - Sonic Reducer

Music is My Hot Hot... (03/18/2008)

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded. - Yogi Bera

I've been invited to a friend's birthday party in the city in a pre-St. Patrick's day debacle. I don't go to every party I'm invited to because, in general, I'm not such a social butterfly. I would rather stay in and read a good book or watch a good show. But if my friends want to party at a bar in the city and if my friends want me to come, then dammit, I will be there. Like good pancakes, good friends stick together. There is one fact that everyone knows: it's not a party until I start dancing.

I look at the location on The Google and determine it isn't near any good sources of public transportation. It's not near Bart. It's not Caltrain. I hate driving to the city; people who punch puppies drive into SF. Luckily, my roommate is also a friend of the birthday girl and I convince him to come and to drive. Score! Now, parking in SF sucks on a Saturday and not shockingly after twenty minutes of wandering around for a parking spot we throw in the towel and just pay.

We head into Madrone: quite a cozy little bar. It's a lounge setting with old trunks sitting out all trendy and pretending to be drink tables. The crowd is chill. My group is chill. We sit and chat. I drink sophisticated style and discuss life, work, etc. "Yes, yes" I say, "as my social network profile implies I am extremely single." The ladies perk up a bit. Why wouldn't they?

While trying to decide the last time I have seen the birthday girl I ask, "did you visit when we had the fifty-inch plasma?" She shakes her head and then one of the other ladies perks up, "wait. Let's talk more about this television." I smile and direct her to the DD who watches a lot of Law and Order on our monstrosity. I miss being without most television.

The night is going well. The DJ is spinning all Prince and Michael Jackson and we are chilling in our little chairs. Then the moment strikes. A new friend of the birthday girl walks in wearing her black hoodie and jeans; she takes off the hoodie to reveal a simple white long sleeve shirt, but what's that? Do I see she is wearing black leather cuffs with studs? That catches my eye.

She sits down and starts to sway a little in her seat and I can recognize the movement of someone ready to dance. Music is my favorite mistress. I stand and extend my arms pointing towards her. "You want to dance!" Without words she stands, takes a giant stride across the trunk/table and starts to move. I brought the noise; she brought the funk.

The hours of Prince-tastic music pass faster than I would have liked and we have a multi-hour train wreck of a dance party. There is chair dancing. There is table dancing. We have a dance off. It is scandalous.

Days later I ask the friends with cameras to send pictures from that night and they shake their heads. "No Jordan. I think they are too indecent to post on the internet." I shake my head back. Whatever. I concentrate and use my Jedi mind powers. Now I have photos. Dear god, they are too scandalous for you.

Too Much of Nothing (03/16/2008)

It's my life to ruin; my own way. - Morrissey (Alma Matters)

Sunday afternoons have returned to being fairly nice for me after the Friday and Saturday night parties. I get a chance to sit outside on the patio, soak up a few rays of the sun and enjoy a bottle of white wine. I didn't even get home until a little past 4am last from debauchery in the city, so a slow start and slow day are nice.

I took an excursion earlier in the day down to my old Alma Matter (also a good song by Morrissey starting a cat that looks vaguely like mine) to see the new library. During the fund raiser to get the library built, if you shelled out enough cash, than a brick with an inscription on it would be placed on the path between the student union and the library. I try, very hard, to give a healthy amount of money to charity throughout the year. Typically my university and high school fall into the standard monthly pecking order, but this time, I did some adjustment of amounts to get enough for the brick. Sorry environment, children, impoverished, my ego took a front seat to you in 2006.

I've been a to a few places that have done the named brick thing, an I am always amazed that there is no central map you can look at to help you find a brick. Instead you just have to start walking slowly and methodically scanning row after row of bricks until success or, god forbid, failure. I found my brick quickly in my search and smiled. I like having my name on my school. I like having it there and knowing that it will be around longer than I will be around.

My college years were important to me, but not especially formative. There were more a happy pause in my life. I also spent nearly no time at the library. My math degree meant I had no essays to write, no novels to read and no history to research. I could walk straight to the tiny little math section in the basement without pause. I once spent hours scouring for a book that showed Euclid's proof that there are infinitely many primes. If I could have my name anywhere in that school it would need to be something to do with the dorms. My ties time as an RA and my ties to housing are the strong ties I still have with the school. I spent three of my four years in a freshman dorm; it's probably why I never quite lived the senior experience.

Before that, high school was the time I became who I am. I'm looking, always looking, for an opportunity to get my name on my high school. There I want something related to the music department. Each year when I donate there, I asked them to filter it towards music. That place filters so much of the general fund to sports, it makes me sad inside. I love the required performing arts course everyone has to take. The school tried to drop the requirement at some point and the band geeks flooded letters of disapproval. I know it's petty, but there is little more pleasurable than watching a group of jocks, who have stalled to fulfill the performing arts requirement until senior year, forced to play recorders in front of their parents.

iPhonation (03/09/2008)

iPhone SDK declared great by people's imaginations - Salon.com

The first program I ever wrote was for my Apple IIe and I can't remember how young I was. It was written in the glory of Apple Basic (Integer Basic, I suppose) on DOS 3.0. My first program was a glorified choose your own adventure story called The Quest because I really didn't how to do anything more than print text, get input and GOTO. I do remember the evolution of my procedural mind over the time working on that program. There was a fantastic "AHA!" moment when I realized I could store the fact that someone purchased an item at one point, and use that to influence how later gameplay would occur. Slowly, my personal text adventure evolved with no connection to the outside world. If only I had the inspiration of Zork to guide me.

On the first PC I got I played in GW Basic and QBasic creating a game called Dragon Hunter that looked terribly similar to the Trogdor flash game. When I learned about GOSUB, I was a happy boy. I have a healthy resume of intimate programming knowledge under my belt for C, C++ and Java. I've written object-oriented PASCAL, Perl and FORTAN in ways that would terrify most practitioners of those languages.

When iPhone released the SDK this week, I thought to my self, "Ohh, Objective-C to write programs on the iPhone? I've written plenty of C++ and plenty of mobile applications in Java. I'll have cTarotTouch (an update to my MIDP Mobile Tarot app) done in a couple of hours." I downloaded the SDK and started looking through the sample apps and my brain started hurting. If Objective-C is based on C, than why is it so foreign to me? Ohh, is that Smalltalk syntax? I don't know Smalltalk and it is completely foreign to me. It is completely foreign to me. I have quickly come to realize that this update to my program isn't going to be a simple update done over and afternoon of The Young One's and white wine, this will require a dedicated effort on my part. I'm not willing to make that effort yet.

So instead I did another iPhone endeavor. My website currently exists in HTML, RSS and WML. Wouldn't it be awesome to have an iPhone specific version of it? Well no, it would be pointless, but at least I can say I built an iPhone app the weekend after the SDK came out. Even if it wasn't built on the SDK. So if you have an iPhone, take a peek and behold the new and glorious iPhonated version of website!

My Mistress (03/05/2008)

You have as long as you want to prepare it, but then the world decides what it's really about. - Merlin Mann

My iPhone broke over the weekend! I had a first generation, order on iDay, phone and had served me well for seven good long months. During the party on Saturday night, I came to the realization that I couldn't send text messages. I could receive them, I could write the respond, but the "send" button on the screen wouldn't tap.

It was in the days to follow as I was fiddling with my phone I came to realize that about a one-inch band across the phone was no longer responding to taps. The "send" button fell inside of this band. I was complaining about this on work on Monday when a coworker suggested that I got ditch work a bit early to go get it fixed at the Apple store. So I made my online appointment at Burlingame for 4:15pm, jumped into my car and drove there.

Downtown Burlingame has metered parking? This type of thing offends me and I had no quarters, but just a quick half mile drive away everything was fine and residential. So I parked my car and walked back to the store to make my appointment. At 4:18pm or so, the genius called me up, I demoed my issue and he fiddled a little with my phone. He said "I'm going to go into the back for second to clean it" and walked behind a door into genius land. I sat at the counter looking around at the people there with their computers. I heard one guy buying and iPhone and asking, "so how does this work if I don't have a computer?"

Finally the genius returned from the land of wind and ghosts with my phone and looks a little embarrassed. "You got a couple texts. I tried not to read them, but it's big on the screen and I did. I thought you might want to see." There are on my screen were two messages from "Sarah."

I read the first one and think, "ohh, she is talking about her pending resignation from work and how stressed she is about it." I read the second and think, "I hate you Sarah." I clear the messages and explain to the genius it is just a coworker having some fun with me. He starts to fiddle with my phone again and the now terrifying sound of a new SMS arriving occurs.

The genius chuckles, hands my phone to me and says, "You're a player man." "No! It's just a coworker having fun with me." "Whatever, I'm not here to judge." I look at him with a gaze that would cripple a human. He laughs again seeming to know that Apple Store has diffused my powers. One more messages come through before he pops the sim card out of my phone and puts it into a new one.

We activate the new phone, and he starts to put my old phone into the case to ship back to Apple. "Umm, aren't you going to wipe the data?" "Sure, we wipe the data, we just don't do it here." "I would be more comfortable if you wiped the data right now." "We're not some fly-by-night shop, we wipe the data." "Don't you remember the girl getting the refurbished iPod filled with adult videos because Apple forgot to wipe the data? Just give me the phone and I'll wipe." He hands me back the phone, "you trying to get rid of the proof of your affair in the SMS history?" I nod, "yeah. Her husband would kill me."

Finally I ask, "what data was deleted on the old phone that won't get synced back onto my new one?" He quickly and incorrectly responds, "none. It's a full sync so you get everything back." I sigh. "Well, like for example, I know the wireless networks and keys don't go back on. Is there anything else like that?" He looks confused, "no, it should be a full sync. You'll get everything back." "Really? So my complete SMS history will come back on my new phone?" "Well no, that's only on the phone."

I think, "exactly" as I walk out the door with my new currently bubble-free and fully functional phone. I guess I should spend on some Apple Care. I don't have my coworker's number, so I can't text her back on my new working phone. Luckily, she sends on final message on my drive home.

She mentioned that it was my coworker Doug's idea and how much funnier it would have been if the exact same texts said "Doug" on the top instead of "Sarah."

Birthdays and Bars (03/02/2008)

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world. - Oscar Wilde

So there is this on going debate as to what the difference is between those who drink at home and those who go out. I generally like to say that I drink at home like a civilized person, though I once her Bill Shatner say that only alcoholics drink at home.

Last weekend it was Tomato's birthday and she went out to NY with bunchies of my friends to celebrate. I spent that weekend working. I spent that weekend working hard, which is sad because my calendar had "Awesome Trip to NY" written in on it. Well, I hear they had a lot of fun, even if I missed it. I hear the bought Rock Band on a whim. Rocking.

This weekend Tomato is back in town and said, "Ummm, my birthday isn't over yet. Let's go celebrate some more." She makes a good point! As I have historically done my best to celebrate my birthday for at least a week, I encourage other people to do the same type of thing. She decides for her return trip to go bar hoping in San Francisco.

I get the address of the starting point, the Big Foot Lounge, and think to myself "that was on the list of my last pub crawl in the city, but we didn't go because it was too far north." The problem for me is, it's a long haul up to the city. I tend to do my bar hoping in Palo Alto. Caltrain takes around an hour and it only runs once per hour on the weekend trains. Then, to get from the terminus to Polk is a $12 taxi ride on top of that. Something that has always amazed me is the complete lack of Taxi's outside the Caltrain station. Whenever a train arrives there is always a line of ten or more people wondering why there are no taxies.

That trip is hard and expensive work, but thankfully I work in high tech where people are paid more money than they deserve. Also, Tomato is a rock star, and I wouldn't miss a party she was intending to crank to ten. Because when she and I both crank a party to ten, it has the chance to go to eleven.

We get to bar a little before the starting time expecting to be the first and get in some sophisticated pre-drinks, only our friends are just as retentive and punctual as we are and have already arrived. I didn't bring the genius gift I had gotten her, because it would not have been a convenient thing on the train, but she will get it soon.

Lest we be called drunkards, we decide to start the night off sophisticated style anyway.

Then the Fernet comes out. It is the best shot of Fernet I have ever had.

Then I start to dance, and the party has officially begun.

Oh, and we never went to a second bar. Why would you? The party is where ever we happen to be.

Wine Everywhere (03/01/2008)

Wine has been with civilized man from the beginning. - Robert Mondavi

I leave the family in downtown Palo Alto to walk home and head over to get a haircut and pickup my prescriptions. At the Safeway I buy food for dinner and a bottle of wine. We have been out of wine at my house for weeks.

When I get back from the store I decide I am going to be awesome and decant the wine before they get back so that we can have some with our early dinner before heading off to the city for a Polk Street pub crawl. I pour the bottle of wine into our decanter over the kitchen counter. There is a moment of pause as I notice there is red wine dripping from the bottom of decanter. I wonder if I have poured wine down the side, but I wonder just for a slip second. The bottom of the decanter breaks off. I mean the ENTIRE bottom of the decanter breaks off.

An entire bottle of wine dumps out of the bottom of the decanter which is now a four inch in diameter open channel. It falls around six inches from the container onto the counter splashing EVERYWHERE. The counter is covered in wine. The wine is waterfalling over the edge of the counter and flowing down the white kitchen cabinets. The cloths I was intending to wear out that night are complete covered in wine. Thank God almighty the cat was not hanging out with me in the kitchen else a terrified wine-soaked cat would have gone racing across our white carpets.

In just a few seconds the insanity is over and gravity has done the most of its work. I debate my next action. What must I do in the first thirty seconds that I will not be able to do later? I strip to my underwear and throw my clothes into the washing machine. Than I head back down stairs and start to mop up an entire bottle of wine from the counter and floor.

I guess a decanter is only designed to survive a couple thousand uses and since we've owned ours for almost a year, it's well past that! What was really sad? I only bought one bottle of wine!