Story Archive - March 2007

Social Life 2.0 (03/27/2007)

If not for the unfortunate shortage of zombies, chainsaws, shotguns and Bruce Campbell, "300" would probably be considered the most perfect action movie in the history of mankind. - Ragnar Danneskjold

I've gotten a little more free time recently than expected and I've been using it play around in the world. Saturday we went up to the city to watch 300 at the Metreon on the IMAX. On our drive up, I got a twitter about pillowfight downtown, and was sad I didn't hear about it until it was too late to attend. We went straight to the movie and I left it feeling dirty. I'm still completely unsure if I enjoyed the show or if it is just complete trash. I can't decide if I want to recommend it to friends or tell them it's not worth their time. I could flip a coin and go either way on it.

We wandered around in the city for a little while afterwards. I twittered and dodgeballed the whole time so those up-to-the-minute stalkers could find me. This crazy First Life 2.0 world I've started playing in scares and excites me, since I have been a social technophobe since around the days of the Internet 0.5. The group grabbed some coffee and I bought a second HDMI cable at the Apple store for my new TV. Cables are tricky things on the price scale because you can easily find an $80 cable and you can easily find a $12 cable that is just as good. I got a $20 one from the Apple Store; it's not the cheapest one out there, but I could have done a lot worse.

I went to Oakland for Thai dinner and played scrabble where I got beaten, but not rocked. I haven't played a lot of board games in a while; I haven't even played crazy card games (Hearts, Spade, Euchre, Pinochle, Cribbage) in a while, and those games are long time friends. In highschool we played Hearts at the coffee shop nearly every day after school and it rocked.

I went the entire weekend without even checking work mail, which I haven't done in a long while, and it makes the weekends more fun and Monday morning more painful.

Mail Fraud (03/23/2007)

Oh, man. The high-res version of the show looks totally swell on Apple TV. Daddy happy. - Merlin Mann

I was going to bed very late at the start of the week, checking email one last time before hitting the sack, when I saw the ship notification from Apple. The AppleTV was on its way! Then I saw the ship address; it was my old apartment.

The next day, when I went into the office I needed to try and get it sorted out. I generally have meetings from the first six hours of my day, but I would always explain my problem with the AppleTV, and people would understand I had priority one issues to deal with.

My first call went into the FedEx customer care to try and change the shipping address. They were kind enough to tell me that they couldn't update the shipping address, only Apple could do that. I let customer care of the hook pretty quickly, four minutes, and said I would call Apple.

My second call went into the Apple customer care to try and change the shipping address. They were kind enough to tell me that they couldn't update the shipping address, only FedEx could do that. I explained FedEx had told me the exact opposite and that I needed to talk with her manager. I went up one level in the support chain and talked with the manager, who very kindly explained to me again that FedEx had to do it. She gave me a suggestion that FedEx may not be able to change the ship address, but should be able to hold it at the shipping center and I could pick it up from there. Once again she said Apple had no ability to change the shipping address once it leaves.

My third call went into the FedEx customer care center. I explained I needed to change the shipping address, she explained that only Apple could do it, I explained that I had just gotten off a fifteen minute customer care with Apple and they told me very firmly that I needed to call FedEx. I got escalated to a manager who told me very firmly that I needed to call Apple. "I don't know what Apple is talking about. We do all their shipping and they should know that they can change a shipping address through the retail management tool." At this point, I had this great dream of doing a conference call and letting the two customer care centers just have a go at each other.

So finally, defeated I called my apartment complex to see if FedEx would drop at the door or the leasing office. The apartment explained that FedEx would drop at the leasing office, and a new plan formed in my mind, because my old apartment is in the same complex and just a few blocks down the road. On Friday, the moment I saw the "package dropped off" notice on the FedEx site I raced home to my old apartment, grabbed the shipping slip off the door, and then went to the leasing office to pick it up. Take that universe! Score one for me.

Personality Spam (03/22/2007)

To take an Annamite to bed with you is like taking a bird: they twitter and sing on your pillow. - Graham Greene

There are probably around a hundred people in the world that care about what I'm doing. They don't care about it on a daily basis, but from time to time, they want to check up on me. I just had a colleague I haven't worked with in three years swing by the site and then message me. There are other people who care about my life on a daily basis and subscribe to the RSS. I don't have the time to personally send a message to all these people every day, but the website solves that data distribution problem. Personality spam is interesting, because even people I don't know care can watch. I monitoring a dozen or so of my friend's websites, some know, and some would probably be shocked to know. I don't know who has the care and time to follow me, and I can follow others who don't realize I have the care or the time.

This solves the problem of daily updates, but what about people who want to know what I'm doing every few minutes? Twitter has come along to solve that problem. I'm just playing around with it right now, and I'm sure I'll get bored with it at some point, but for now, it's a bit of fun to be sending the IM's, SMSs and web posts over to my twitter account about the most inane things. Any of you stalkers a twitter user? Tell me, I'd love to stalk you better too.

Boxer or the Bag (03/18/2007)

I met an old cowboy. I saw the look in his eyes. Somethin' tells me he's been here before. - Dead Horse (Guns N' Roses)

I got home from a visit to Santana Row at 8:30am. Ha! I just had one of crazy, long and stupid nights that are needed from time to time to stay grounded. I parked my car outside, knowing the garage would wake up the roommates, and then went to bed. At 11am my phone rang; it was the roommate. He was shocked to learn I was home, having not heard me come in, and noticing that my car wasn't in the garage. We were getting up for a a trek to the city to see a movie at the Castro. If I were a smart person, I probably wouldn't have knowingly gotten only three hours of sleep the day before doing a party in the city, but I have good excuses to be acting a little dumb right now. Besides, I haven't slept well for a week, and I'm not expecting that to change anytime too soon.

We saw "Toki Wo Kakeru Shoujo" and while it had a lot of light moments, it was generally incredibly depressing and excellent. I am not in the mood to see depressing movies, even if they are excellent.

We went on our pub crawl through the city afterwards, and I went all generation Y. I was disappointed I couldn't remember how to play Google Dodgeball on my phone, because I haven't really had a good opportunity to use it before. The kids, they love their phones! I don't even have twitter. Instead I just started "texting" all my buds about their plans for that night trying to see if I could find some group of them to hookup with us during our crawl in the city. I know, it was so "old school", and that it likely why I was unsuccessful in that.

We hit around four bars that night, and without a doubt, my favorite was Blur on Polk Street. One of the main reasons was that we were there for 2-for-1 happy hour, so each time I ordered a drink I magically got two of them.

On the reflective side of things, this is mostly new territory for me. While I was a pseudo-social butterfly in school, I never did "the scene" after graduating. I still don't do the scene. I had a coworker take me on a couple "drunk tanks" through the city, and we had a ton of the fun with it. It would be a ton of fun if you lived it every weekend, knew the spots to hang out, and had the friends to play tag with, but it takes time and investment to reach that stage and I will not make it. Though I'd love to tag along with you if you want me to!

Sanata Hoes (03/17/2007)

Just as we have two eyes and two feet, duality is part of life. - Carlos Santana

I was on my way home on Friday night when a call came in from a good friend. I was planning on seeing her on Sunday, but I mentioned that life has been a rough lately, and she didn't think I should be spending the evening doing what was previous on my plan. I hadn't visited her place since she moved into the Row, so I adjusted my course and header over. Santana Row is pretentious and insane. I have a lot of conceptual issues with it, but it can be a fun place to hang out.

After some time of wine and cheese we headed out. We poured the remaining half the wine bottle into two disposable coffee cups and headed out. It's a lot of fun to wander around the city streets with your alcohol and no one at Santana Row is going to question you with a disposable coffee cup in your hand. It was a little chilly outside, but I'm not sure it reduced the amount of women in very high heals and very short skirts; they are nicknamed the Santana Hoes.

For many years, I have taken this young lady out to dinner and paid for it. She was unemployed all those years and had always said to me that she would buy me dinner as soon as she had a real job. This was the night of payback. I never even took notice of the name of the restaurant we ended up at. I know we had Tuna sashimi, Quail, a burger, salmon and a half bottle of Pinot. By the time we hit the restaurant we were already drunk, it comes from drinking a bottle of wine. The waiter was very kind to us, as we gave him a really hard time. She wanted to have rabbit, and asked the waiter to assuage her moral objections of eating such a smart and cute animal; he was unable to and suggested the cow which is an ugly and stupid animal. At one point he said, "If I was to order a dish" and I corrected him, suggesting that he use the subjunctive tense instead of the preterit. He was offended. We apologized.

I paid for the wine (expensive) and we tipped well at the end of the night.

My mind is so trained for the days where I paid very careful attention to how I spent my money. I tell people my money management technique is just to always spend less than I earn. At one point that meant being very frugal. My spending has not increased over my life at the rate of my income. That's not a bad thing. It means I save a LOT of money these days, but it means I'm cheaper in life than I need to be. It's fun to go out and splurge from time to time.

Professor Jordan (03/15/2007)

Did you never observe how imitations, beginning in early youth and continuing far into life, at length grow into habits and become a second nature, affecting body, voice, and mind? - Socrates

It's the Ides of March again. The day after Pi day has held a special meaning for me for nine years now. It's one of the dates near and dear to my heart and always a day of reflection. Next month I have a double-wammy on April 17th followed by April 20th.

On a different note, my office has started a in-house training program which involves picking smart people, asking them what they know, and then having them teach a class. The other option is, find a class that needs a teacher and spring it on someone. I had that happen to me, where I was hit without a lot of notice to run the lecture on the entire technology stack. Teaching was always one of the careers that interested me. When I interviewed a few different technology companies out of school, I was looking at ones where I could get into the training program to train others. I held a vision for a while that I could be a high school math teacher or college math professor. I don't think I'd feel out of place in either of those roles, but I'm happy with the other path I've gone down too.

When I was in high school and college I was scared to death to get up in front of people. My junior year, when I first became an RA, I remember how terrified I was to get in front of the residents to run the floor meetings. My senior year, when I was an RA in a freshman hall, I had to get up in front of the parents at the start of the year and try and prove to them that the long haired hippie kid was going to take care of their sons and daughters. I would prepare, prepare and prepare. I would drill over the talks again and again, keep myself awake at night, and nearly have the entire thing memorized by the time it hit.

Somewhere over my last six or seven years out of school that fear has faded away. Now, asked to jump in front of a group of people to run an hour lecture for something where I am completely unprepared, I say "no problem." No problem. Want me to jump in front of a group of people and give a toast? Give a speech? Present someone else's presentation unprepared? Not a problem. I'm happy to do it. I love it.

Seeing the Music (03/13/2007)

I learned all my songs by listening over and over until I could play it back. It took me sixty years. The younger generation is clever and writes it down on paper, that's why we bring them along. - Cathal McConnell

I went out to a concert to see Boys of the Lough (pronounced Lock for you Americans). Hmm, well, their concert is actually this weekend, but they had a pre-show at a music school in the local area that was open to the public and I went there for it. While they didn't play as much music as they likely will at a real performance, it's definitely more fun to be in a little group with them and be able to ask questions and get answers. I got to ask all sorts of great stuff.

Two of the members of the group were barely comprehensible to me. One was from Shetland, and said he grew up on an island where he couldn't get more than three miles from the ocean. The other was an older lad, and mentioned that he hadn't had to speak conversant English until he went to college. Before that he had only spoken Irish around the village.

I got in two questions, and while I had plenty more to ask, I thought it best to let the kids ask a few.

"Does the accordion play different notes when you push and pull?" The answer is yes. In fact, he opened it up for me and I pointed out that it has the same mechanical structure as the harmonica. The accordionist had two different accordions with him. One was basically a standard chord harmonica while the other was the equivalent of a chromatic harmonica. I guess there really isn't that many ways to make music; cool.

"There's no drum. Do you keep tempo with everyone tapping their feet?" The answer is no. The guitar player is the one keeping tempo with him strumming. I wouldn't have guessed it. I know when I used to play in a group without a drum, the lead would tap his foot loud enough on the ground that we could feel the vibrations and that's how we kept in sync. The lead describe the synchronized foot tapping as, "we all just like to dance in our chairs while we play." This was followed by a five year old girl commenting, "This is, um, just a compliment. I like what you do with your feet."

I was impressed that the flute had no octave key and yet he could manage to hit three octaves on it. I pointed it and got the response, "It's lonely in the third octave. I found when I play altissimo, people tend to want to go away." Much laughter followed.

Hello world, hope you haven't missed me too much.

What Does my Fortune Hold? (03/12/2007)

The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs. - Arthur E. Waite

I had very engaged discussions with my fellow tarot card readers in my younger years. I used to do readings for people a couple of times a month, and I would always start off the session on what the cards mean to me. A lot of card readers will tell you about the mystic forces at work, the divine and other hullabaloo around how the cards predict the future. The biggest debate among the believers is whether tarot cards have inherent power or whether they are a channel for the reader's powers. I think it's all hogwash.

To me, the cards are a tool for contemplation. Their power comes from the skills of the reader to interpret the Querent's life using the cards as talking points. A good reading has the reader and the Querent actively talking through each point as it's revealed and leading each other down a journey of inspection and understanding. I remember doing multiple readings for friends that thought it was full of bunk, but since I knew them so well, I could easily interpret things in a way that applied to their life and gave them something to chew on.

Reading for yourself is more challenging, because you don't get the outside opinion helping to shape things. As much as I indulge in self-reflection, it's all too easy to fall down the wrong path without another person to stop it. I slept with the cards under my pillow last night, as should be done when they've been set aside a while. Like many ancient beliefs, I don't necessarily believe it does anything, but sometimes there's a hint of truth to something. I went through the reading using the Keltic method. You can play along at home if you'd like:

1. This covers him: Temperance
2. This crosses him: VIII of Cups
3. This is beneath him: Ace of Cups
4. This is behind him: Seven of Pentacles
5. This crowns him: IV of Wands
6. This is before him: VI of Swords
7. What the Querent fears: The High Priestess
8. Family Opinion: II of Swords
9. Hopes: Queen of Cups
10. Final Outcome: The Fool

There's about a one in three chance of ending with major arcana, but it's supposed to mean a stronger reading when it happens. I know I've never ended with The Fool as the final outcome and it's a weird one to chomp on, because The Fool is inherently not an outcome, it is the moment before the outcome. Hrmph. Thanks, but no thanks, mystical powers.

You May Experience some Turbulence (03/11/2007)

In a turbulent environment the change is so widespread that it just routes around any kind of central authority. So it is best to manage the bottom-up change rather than try to institute it from the top down. - Kevin Kelly

My world got jolted pretty hard on Saturday and I'm still in shock. My life started going full steam in August and I don't think I've taken any time since then to pause, soul search and change; instead I've just been riding down a path of least resistance that has a lot of things wrong with it. I've had this cycle happen to me a few times in my life where I get stuck in a rut where things not being right, don't realize it until things get rough, kick myself about it, and then get out again. This time feels weird, because I think it's the first time someone else has kicked me. It was a lot harder than I would have expected.

What did I do about it? Well, I'm only on day two, but trying to pull back out into the world again. I spent Saturday evening doing my first round of soul searching wandering around the campus. It was reminiscent of my nights wandering around Santa Clara. It was reminiscent of my nights wandering around San Leandro. I found myself in front of one of the independent theaters and watched "Ms. Potter" which is very cute, very sad with a bittersweet ending. When I reached home the pedometer showed eight miles. I guess I'm in good enough shape to handle the Bay to Breakers this year. The night was restless and I thumbed through my last few years of journals. I've mentioned a few times that when posts on my site slow down, it doesn't mean I'm not writing, it means I'm not writing stuff I'm willing to share. There has been a lot, especially over the last month or two, of me realizing things are going in the wrong direction. Yet with so many other things feeling so right, it didn't really blip high on my radar.

Sunday I woke up a little soar, did my blood draw, got fresh pills and then put on my skates. One of the things I realized in my searching is how long it has been since I've gone skating. I went down to my cafe, sent out the few work-related messages I needed to (The start date change for daylight savings didn't have the most pleasant effect on the tech industry), and then flipped through the weekly adding the things that interest me to my calendar. That's another thing I used to do that has somehow gone missing, subsumed by less important things. I skated all through Stanford, pausing often to make and receive personal and work-related phone calls. I saw the exhibit at the Cantor I've been wanting to see, "In the American West: Photographs." I skated to the bookstore and picked up a fresh moleskin. My fingers have been itching to write in one again. I sat down and wrote one of the longest personal entries I have ever written and trimmed it down to a portion to send out. I've got one letter to mail and some food to eat. The GPS says I've skated twelve miles so far.

Life's Been Rough. Just Got Rougher (03/11/2007)

I stood outside the theatre and starred at the two titles, "Ms. Potter" and "The Last King of Scottland." One has cartoon bunnies and no killing. The other has lots of killing and no cartoon bunnies. I choose "Ms. Potter," though in the end I'm not sure that it was any happier of a story.