Horn-rimmed dilemma

I stood in the gleaming mirrored palace that was an eyeglasses store at the mall. Row upon row upon row of eyewear stared at me from the walls. Though anything beyond a foot or two was blurry; the lenses I was wearing now were not up to the task of correcting my vision.

Which is partly why I was here.

The other part involved my somehow hurting my right eye. Parts of my right eye that were normally white were now angry pink. Dr. Bruce said it was simply a burst blood vessel. Dr. Bruce said it wasn't serious, and there was no sign of infection. Dr. Bruce had told me to stop wearing contacts for 7 days, to put medicinal eye drops containing antibiotic and steroids in my eye four times a day, and to come back and see him in a week.

Without contacts, wearing a prescription that didn't function well... not a good way to go. Time to update my glasses.

The short, redheaded sales girl, Lisa, had pulled out several frames for me to try on. Thicker frames than the wire-frame I was currently wearing, per my request. But they were all... brown. "Can I see some in black?" I asked.

"Well... OK. I normally encourage brown," she said. "Black is often too harsh."

"Perhaps, but black goes with everything" I said. Lisa left me alone for a bit while I tried a few more pairs on.

I texted Lindsey to get her opinion: black or brown? She replied "You have to wear them, so go with your gut. That said, black can sometimes be pretty harsh..."

That was two votes to my one, and almost word-for-word. I still liked black, though. I settled on a pair that looked, with my blurred vision, to be OK. "I like these..." I noticed the "Two frames for the price of one!" sign. "For this deal," I pointed at the sign, "do the frames have to be the same?"

"No, not at all!"

"Then I'll get these," and held out the black frames, "and these," and pointed to the brown frames.

Problem solved. Easy-peasy. • 6:47 AM 4 comments

Monday morning short links

A bunch of stuff too short for their own post.

• Mississippi Pizza, in North Portland, is pretty awesome, though a bit crowded early on a Saturday night. One of the cashiers was Jacob, who used to work at Taco del Mar. Also, they had gluten-free pizza and beer; my friend liked the pizza crust, but the guy sitting next to us who had some kind of foot scar said the beer was just so-so. Also, belly dancers!
  
• Why is it that the financial CEOs whose bad management have led this country (and the world) to economic disaster can have a nice sit-down and photo-op with President Obama, but the CEO of General Motors is forced to step down by that same White House? What's the difference here?
  Update - 12:25pm: OK, I stand corrected. Via Jed @ dKos, a pair of articles from September 2008 showing that the head of AIG, and the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both stepped down upon receiving taxpayer assistance.
  
• The Da Vinci exhibit at OMSI is pretty interesting and chock-full of details about the genius' life and work. I though the bait-and-switch of presenting a Da Vinci-esque wooden bicycle, which turns out upon close reading of the included materials seems to be a hoax, was more funny than annoying.
  
• Ran my fastest 4 miles of the year on Sunday morning. Which isn't all that fast, but, y'know... still. 7 miles in 1:15:37 for an average 10:48 pace. Stopped at least twice for water from the fountain, and at least once for traffic, and a couple of walking breaks.
  

I thought I had more than that. I'll post more later if I think of it. Happy Monday! • 6:31 AM 2 comments

Overheard conversation

Republican Co-worker (RCW): Well, ol' [High-Level Manager] is not too happy about [some dumb thing RCW thinks is important].

Libertarian Co-worker (LCW): Really?

RCW: Sure! There's going to be payback, for sure!

LCW: You're saying that [HLM] is angry? Well that can't be true. I ran into him in the elevator today and he seemed like he was in a good mood.

LCW sounded sincere and not sarcastic when he failed to make the connection between the political actions of HLM and HLM's mood.

I did not think someone could be so naive that they assumed there had to be a connection between a) being polite while being observed in a public space by one's employees, and b) whether or not that person was going to seek a consequence for a political decision that had been made.

It's almost... childlike. Is that a lack of awareness or of empathy? • 8:24 AM 2 comments

"Brain and brain; what is brain?"

A couple of days ago, Steven Lloyd Wilson over at the snarky entertainment site Pajiba sat down to watch some classic Star Trek (did I really need to link that? Really? Fine). Y'know, classic Star Trek, the kind with cheesy sets filmed in the late 1960s, young Kirk and Spock and McCoy, where all the women wore go-go boots and mini-skirts and most of the guys wore too much eyeliner and girdles under their primary-colored pajamas.

Man, I loved that show when I was younger. I hate to get all "get off my lawn" on you, but I remember back in the days before there were seventeen different Star Trek movies and a new TV series every couple of years. I remember when all we had was just three seasons (and an animated series!) of Star Trek to obsess over. I remember having fanzines full of deep philosophical discussion about every little nuance of every single one of the 79 filmed episodes, which were collected into books, which is where I read them because I never went to one of those fancy Star Trek Conventions I kept reading about.

Star Trek in the 1970s was relegated to weekday afternoon showings on our local independent station, Monday through Friday, with an extra showing on the weekend. Those episodes were cut down, edited from the original airing, to make room for lots of commercials. I'd have to fight for a chance to watch it because we had one TV for the four people in my house (mom, dad, my sister, me), and we had no way to record it and save it for later. Of course, in Portland we only had five channels which meant either a lot of competition or no competition, depending on what the other stations had to offer.

Because of Wilson's Pajiba article, I wanted to sit down and watch some Star Trek. I had not seen an episode in years. So Kevin and I planned an evening. Kevin mentioned that he had never seen the ending to the episode where an alien babe steals Spock's brain, which I knew, from all those books, was unanimously known as the single worst episode of classic Star Trek.

And so we did. And it was so very bad. The Enterprise crew encounters an alien ship with "advanced ion drives", and while they are admiring it, a hot brunette in go-go boots and a miniskirt shows up on the bridge, puts everyone to sleep, and fondles Spock's head. When they wake up (after the commercial break), Spock is down in Sickbay (how'd he get down there so fast?) on Dr. McCoy's operating table. And he's missing his brain but still alive, which is chalked up to his "Vulcan physique"... um... somehow. McCoy doesn't really know, but he does know that if Kirk can't find the brain, Spock will die in twenty-four hours. Everyone just takes that as a given, like it's common knowledge that Vulcans can't go without their brains for the same period of time that planet Earth spins on its axis and that's not weird at all.

Oh, the cheese. Kirk and Chekov spend nearly ten minutes trying to guess which of three possible planets in the Sigma Draconis system could be the one that was home to a race with "advanced ion drives" (hint - it's the one with the off-the-scale energy readings, guys!), and down they beam. They find a planet with giant bearded men on the surface, and the "Givers of Pain and Delight" below. And, oh, my, yes, Kirk has quite the wink-and-nod at the "delights". Half the time he's trying to find the women on this Ice Age planet, and the other half of the time he's badgering the women into giving him back Spock's brain. Poor Nimoy has to walk around like a zombie with a hot plate on his head (which gives McCoy remote control over his body, you see, because apparently in the 23rd century, people lose their brains all the time and need a doctor to move them around like life-sized meat puppets. I'm sure there are no ethical problems with this technology at all).

Luckily McCoy can take advantage of the advanced alien knowledge of brain surgery that is kept on tapes (yes, tapes) just long enough to get Spock back up and running, leaving just enough time for everyone to poke fun at how boring Spock is once he's got his brain back.

We only had time for one more episode so I chose "The City on The Edge of Forever", which was universally acknowledged as the best classic Star Trek episode.

The off-set battles between Harlan Ellison and Gene Roddenberry are the stuff of fan legend and are well-documented so I'll skip that aspect and focus on the show as filmed. But I have to say, with years between me and the last time I watched this episode... the years have not been kind.

Yes, the story is better-structured and there are fewer logical or plot holes. And Shatner reigns in some of his patented over-acting. And Joan Collins' English accent seems a bit out of place in what is supposed to be 1930 Brooklyn. Wait, I slipped into the negative points.

Suffice to say, this is still a cheesy science-fiction show from the late 1960s, with all the flaws that that entails: low budget, poor acting, sterile sets. But the idea, the story... what a huge difference.

McCoy gets injected with some kind of super-drug, goes on a paranoid rampage, and beams himself down to a planet with a time machine on the surface. Wait, that's not the idea yet - it's the set up. I know, it bends probability to the breaking point. While Kirk and Spock and crew go looking for him, McCoy jumps into the time machine and ends up in Earth's past, which changes something that eliminates the Federation and gives Uhura her big moment: being scared and looking to manly Kirk for reassurance. I know, I know, but that's not the big idea yet.

Spock and Kirk jump back into the past to go looking for McCoy, stranding Scotty, Uhura and a couple of redshirts, and end up in Depression-era New York City. After stealing some clothes and beating up a policeman, they break into the basement of a soup kitchen and Kirk promptly falls in love with the proprietress, one Edith Keeler, while Spock gets snarky because he can't build a 23rd Century computer out of stone knives and bear skins. Hang on, wait... that isn't the big idea. Yet. They're trying to find out what McCoy changed. Even though he's not here (and by "here" I mean "at that moment in time").

McCoy shows up after Kirk and Spock even though he jumped first (time travel is funny that way) and ends up in Edith Keeler's basement but somehow never runs in to Kirk and Spock (I know, I know...). Spock finally gets his jury-rigged computer to work long enough to find out that either a) Edith Keeler must die (which Spock repeats a dozen times for the rest of the episode, I swear) or b) she goes on to found a peace movement which allows the Nazis to get the A-Bomb and win World War II. Of course, Kirk has fallen in love with Edith Keeler (who must die! according to Spock), so he's got a difficult choice to make.

There. That's the big idea. This pretty brunette with the peaceful lovin' ideas has to die or the Nazis win and Kirk and Spock's personal history will have never happened.

De Forrest Kelly gets a couple of great scenes; the one where he fondles a bum's head and rants about him having the right amount of cranial development to account for the obvious illusion of 1930 Brooklyn is good, and so is his moment of laying in a cot and telling Edith Keeler (who must die!) that he doesn't believe in her, either.

The writers and director teases the big idea with a little scene where Kirk catches Edith Keeler (who must die!) from falling down the stairs, and Spock scolds him. But the final moment is wrapped up almost too quickly, when McCoy, Spock and Kirk reunite and turn their back on Edith Keeler long enough for her to get fatally killed dead by a runaway car. Kirk remembers that Edith Keeler must die long enough to prevent McCoy (who has just come off a days-long bender on cordrazine so has no idea that Edith Keeler must die!) from saving her life by, I don't know, running out into the street in front of the killer car?

Man, the look of almost-crying on Kirk's face as he turns away from Edith Keeler's now-dead body is so cheesy. Which is OK, because now they've played out the big idea.

The Enterprise command crew changes out of their period costumes, jumps back to their own time, and everything gets wrapped up in a neat little bow.

Just like I remembered it. Man, I loved those old Star Treks. • 6:53 AM 0 comments

Google Sees All

Ever wonder how Google gets all the images for Street View in Google Maps?

With lots of these.



Yes, that's a small sedan with a roof-mounted four-way camera, a magnetized Google logo on the door. They drive around major cities, updating all the images required for Street View. Here's the FAQ. I believe

Tracy and I were at Taco del Mar for lunch this afternoon, and I ran outside to snap a quick picture or two when she pointed it out. Luckily it was stopped at an intersection.

Cool! I think it's cool. You? • 3:16 PM 0 comments

Pizza girl

I eat a lot of pizza. In the past week, I've had gluten-free pizza, free pizza, leftover free pizza, and several slices of Schmizza.

Pizza Schmizza is downtown, just a quick bus ride across the river from my office building. Of course, there are lots and lots of places downtown to eat, but for some reason, when I go downtown, my first choice is Schmizza. Lots of variety, I can get a slice plus a salad for cheap (I need veggies, too), and... well, I'm a regular there. They know me by name and by face. You shouldn't underestimate the value of recognition.

And there's a girl there I like to chat with. I'd like to, I mean, except that I rarely get to. She's tall, she has white-girl dreads, and she dresses kind of granola, but she seems bright, energetic, and positive.

Oh, and she calls me "doll".

"Thanks, doll, that'll be right out," she'll say after I place my order. "Sign right there, doll," as she passes me the debit card receipt and a pen. "Anything else, doll?" she'll ask when she knows that I just ordered my usual Combo #2.

It was cute. I liked it. I didn't read anything more into it beyond what it was - a friendly verbal tic for a regular customer.

And then I heard her call someone else "doll". What? That was my nickname! • 6:36 AM 2 comments

Happy hour

I looked around the room, all tall windows, green curtains, white marble, and mirrors. "I've never been here before," I said. The light outside was yellow-bright, but faded from moment to moment, a partly-cloudy day outside.

Lindsey and I sat at the bar. Why green curtains, I wondered, if the name of the place was Bluehour?

Our waiter brought our drinks, and apologized in advance for being a bit unfocused. "We've been open for 24 hours." Our tall blond waiter looked worn around the edges and his eyes seemed ready to close at any second.

"Oh, right, the concerts. No problem." I said, referring to the 24 one-hour concerts next door, in Wieden + Kennedy's atrium, in honor (dishonor?) of the seventh anniversary of the Iraq War. Lindsey and I had just snuck out of there in search of some food. "Have you been up 24 hours?"

"I was up until four AM, I think, and then I crashed," he leaned on the bar with both arms, "took a nap, then came back. It's been... interesting."

We ordered our food, me a cheese pizza, her a Caesar salad (minus croutons). I hadn't eaten since breakfast, hours ago, and neither had Lindsey. We sipped our drinks and talked and watched the room and the staff and the customers, and the afternoon hour passed pleasantly.

Except... the food kept not arriving. Our waiter apologized for being so out of it due to lack of sleep that he had forgotten to put our order in. "Your drinks are on me," he said. A nice gesture, and appreciated, though my friend was only drinking a club soda. What we'd like, though, was our food.

A young man, formally dressed, carrying a violin case, approached the bar and asked us if the open stool was taken. "Why, hello!" Lindsey recognized him. She introduced me to him. "This is Jun Iwasaki, Concertmaster for the Oregon Symphony."

He, too, looked tired; we asked him if he was playing later, and he said that he had played early that morning. "I had just flown back into town, got a brief nap, then met up with the others to practice. That was at 2."

Lindsey laughed. "Oh, my!" Jun and Lindsey shared a look; I must have looked confused because she said to me, "I could not have done that. But Jun plays at a far higher level than I have ever could." Oh. Right. An hour to practice with musicians you'd never met an hour before performing; that does seem difficult to pull off. On reflection I was impressed. Writers get to polish their work as much as we want before we let anyone see it; musicians make it fresh every time they perform live, with all the risks and rewards that entails.

She and Jun and I talked for a bit, until Jun was joined by a woman, and they moved to the far end of the bar where there were two open seats.

And we continued waiting for our food. Two ladies further down were served a fondue and the smell of melted cheese floated our way. A couple received a plate of French fries. "They ordered after we did," I said. Lindsey just nodded.

Eventually a different waiter apologized for the wait, and explained that the pizza I had ordered had just been put in and would be out soon. I asked that the salad be brought out as soon as it was ready; no need for her to wait longer. The waiter assured us he would do that, and asked if we wanted anything else. We ordered some French fries. "Of course, of course," he repeated. "And I just want you to know that" he gestured at the empty space in front of us where eventually food would appear "this is on me. I'm very sorry for the delay. It's just... we've been open for 24 hours..."

It didn't even connect with me then. I accepted our waiter's (perhaps he was the manager; a waiter would say it was "on the house" or "on us", but a manager would have more ownership and be inclined to say it was "on me") apology and offer. But primarily we were hungry.

Lindsey left the bar for a moment and by the time she'd returned our French fries waiting in front of me. I did a Vanna-wave over them, smiling. "Look what showed up! I'm so glad you're back; I've been trying to hold back so that there were some left for you," I joked. We dug in.

And soon enough her salad (with croutons, which were huge and easily picked off) and my pizza (which was 10" across and would be a "medium" anywhere else but here was an appetizer) were placed in front of us. Again, the waiter (manager?) asked us if we needed anything else, and said, "Don't worry about any of this, it's on me."

That's when it hit me. Anything? And we weren't paying? I turned to Lindsey. "We have an open tab." I picked up my top-shelf gin and tonic. "I could drink a few more of these... Are you sure there's nothing else we want?" I said, smiling. "Maybe I should call a friend or two..." I laughed. I think Lindsey did, too.

We ended up leaving a nice tip, after all that. I'm OK with the service there, and I'm sure it was a fluke. Things happen, but when they happen, as long as the staff keeps me informed and makes an effort to put things right, as they did that afternoon, it goes a long way toward restoring my goodwill. • 6:51 AM 0 comments

We assign meaning to things but sometimes we get it wrong and have to reassign

For the past several years, "Cinnamon" by the Long Winters meant one thing.



And for most of those years, I avoided the song, because of that meaning.

Tonight, this evening, the song was chosen by iTunes on shuffle. And I realized that I can finally put that old meaning away, and hear it as if it was new again.

Time to play the whole album and see what I can see.

It's been a good day. • 5:59 PM 0 comments

My letter to President Obama regarding Geithner and Summers Economic Plan

Yes, please do let the financial executives keep their bonuses, and let the banks and financial institutions assume all of the upside and let the taxpayers take all of the risks. Make sure that the banks have lots and lots of money that they can charge we, the people, exorbitant interest rates on for the basic housing, transportation, and medical care that we require, so that those who abused the lack of regulation to get rich can remain rich.

Yes. That's an excellent plan for restoring the balance of the economy. Keep on explaining it to us poor middle- and lower-class people. I'm sure that the plan that Geithner and Summers keep floating, and that respected economists like Paul Krugman keep shooting down, will work like a charm! Money and riches await - for those who are already rich.

Yes, please, this economic plan is awesome. Obviously Wall Street likes it - the market keeps going up, up, up, as the banks and financial institutions realize they are not going to face any consequences for their disastrous decisions.

Keep pursuing that wonderful, wonderful plan. I'm sure that it will all work out for you, and the people to whom you promised change and hope, in the end.

Labels: lettertoObama

• 12:59 PM 0 comments

What is "it"? What is "this"?

The team I'm on is in IT but we're just one small team. Our responsibilities are narrowly defined; we're responsible for just one small piece of the action. This is a consequence of a combination of a large organization, public sector service, and union contracts.

The goal of the larger organization, IT, is to solve problems, so, in total, we solve problems. However, problems don't always come nice and neat and narrowly defined. Often they're messy and complex and they take more than one team to fix... or at least resolve.

Luckily the many separate teams of IT have a tool that was sold to us as a "communications tool". It's a database that is supposed to be used to collect customer problems in one virtual place, generates trouble tickets for those problems, and that all of the teams of IT refer to and update and check off as we all complete our parts of the problems that customers have.

But because of the vagaries of customer problems, and the minutia of communication in general, and the fact that no database can be designed to cover every possible interaction of fallible imperfect human beings... sometimes things get lost in the process.

Know what the difference is between a "system" and a "process"? A process takes an input, and generates an output. A system then adds feedback; was that output the right output? How can we make it better? Systems are circular.

IT does really well with processes. Systems, not so much. Or maybe that's just the IT department I work for.

My team got an email the other day from someone on another IT team, asking about a customer problem that we had shared responsibility for. In the email, the tech asked a simple question: "Can this ticket be closed?"

Simple questions often aren't. I don't know; can this ticket be closed? I mean, it's possible to close the ticket. It's a simple matter of choosing "closed" and clicking "save". But I'm sure that's not what she meant.

The ticket in question is weeks old, and there were no notes in the appropriate fields showing that the customer, or the customer's boss, had called in to complain that the work in question (it was a request for work to be done, not a crash or problem that needed resolving) had not yet been done. Since the work wasn't a high priority, and my team is strapped for time and resources, if I had noticed this ticket still in our bucket, I would have been sorely tempted to simply log that the customer seemed happy enough not to complain (covering my ass in case of review) and closing it. But that's not our process.

In the strictest terms, we could only close a ticket if the work had, in fact, been done. That was the most correct interpretation of the tech's emailed question.

Our boss copied everyone involved on his reply, but directed his response at my team. "Is this done?"

Ah, now my boss is asking a different question. "Is this done?" Standing by itself, what does that sentence mean? It hinges on what "this" is referring to, doesn't it? Is "this" pointing at the previous email from the tech and referring to the action of "closing the ticket" that she specifically asked? Or does my boss's "this" refer to the strict interpretation of her question and the process of "work done; close ticket to document"?

Since my boss supervises our work and therefore holds the responsibility to discipline in case work is not done, the best interpretation of his question would include the assumption of the process we have in place for actually getting work done. I mean, if one was going to overthink things, that's the assumption that would result in the most happiness; for us, the customer, and the other IT teams.

One could interpret my boss's question as just being about the actual process of closing the ticket. But that path, while strictly logical and defensible in a linguistic sense, isn't politically viable.

So my teammate makes a couple phone calls for information from the customer, and then replies to our boss and the other tech (and copies my team) with, "I checked with the customer and it's done."

His response seems to cover all bases. He mentions calling the customer, which implies that they are satisfied with whatever happened, and he uses the phrase "it's done".

But again, the language barrier of ambiguity strikes. What is "it" that is now "done"? Is "it" the ticket being closed, or the work that was requested by the customer?

Because our boss responds with "But is the ticket closed?" Frustrating, in that it circles back to the original choices presented by the other team's tech and her question. Can the ticket be closed? Isn't closing the ticket just the last step in the process of resolving customer problems? Or is it a separate act in itself?

Didn't my teammate address this with his reply? Or should he have gone into more detail about everything he'd done - called the customer, asked if the work was done, documented and closed the ticket, then replied to our boss?

Is it any wonder there are so many barriers to getting work done at my job? We spent at least a half-hour, maybe more, parsing all the ambiguities of this exchange to try to figure out what, exactly, our boss wants from us and how best to communicate back and forth with him and other teams.

What is "it"? It's it. • 6:48 AM 0 comments

Surprising flavor

Dinner's main course was entertaining conversation and excellent company. But it was spiced with some surprising flavors.

Acadia specializes in Cajun food but it's not the bustling party of Le Bistro Montage nor the comfortable diner of The Delta Cafe; Acadia reaches in the direction of the fancier upscale dining establishments along Rue Bourbon in New Orleans - but minus the white jackets and starched white tablecloths.

We'd started with the cheese plate. I'm not a gourmand nor a restaurant reviewer, so I can't assign words to the various flavors on the plate, but they were all different. The one that drew my dining companion and my attention, though, was the dark red chopped fruit under the smoky-flavored cheese. I asked our waitress about it, and she didn't know at first but returned with news that it was sun-dried tomato. It was good.

Then, my jambalaya had spicy andouille sausage, shrimp, and... duck? Really? Again, though, in spite of my mental reservations, it was delicious.

My friend, who wasn't a vegetarian but who was trying to win a bet about not eating meat the longest, had ordered a gnocchi dish. Which included beets. Which she was not happy about. She found that she enjoyed the flavor the beets added to everything else in the dish, as long as she didn't actually eat the beets. Her face when she tried one, however, told a hundred stories, several of them funny.

For dessert we decided to share some pecan pie. When it arrived it had a scoop of ice cream on top. Which our waitress announced was, in fact, bacon ice cream.

"Oh, no!" I said. "Your bet!"

"The ice cream is all yours," she said, digging in to the pie.

I scooped off some ice cream and tried it. Bacon is one of my favorite foods, but... in ice cream? Turns out it was subtle and not overdone. The rich vanilla was enhanced by the smoky salty bacon. As is every single food that bacon touches. I was relieved.

And with the pecan pie... so delicious. • 6:42 AM 0 comments

Office prank

On her first day back from vacation, she powered up her computer and found... the administrator had logged on while she was gone.

She worked in IT, so she knew that the administrator account allowed full access to the system, and almost anything could have been done to her computer while the administrator had been logged on: programs installed (or uninstalled), system settings changed, wallpaper or monitor settings, mouse movements reversed left-to-right... Literally, anything at all.

Her mind raced. Did she dare log in with her own account and brave whatever prank had been played on her? Or was there a more sinister reason for someone needing full access?

"Who logged on to my computer?" she shouted out over the cube walls. Expressions of surprise and denial came back from the team. And especially from me and Ken. Which caught her attention.

She launched herself up and out of her cube and bolted over to where Ken and I sat. "What did you do?" she accused us.

Ken started laughing. "Nothing!" I was able to keep a straight face, though it was obvious I was trying. "Maybe we had just logged on..." I trailed off, invitingly, suggestively, and suspiciously.

"I knew it!" she cried. "What was it? What did you do?" She had obviously drawn the conclusion that we were lying. When we repeatedly stated that we had done nothing at all to her computer, she did not believe us. Finally, resigned, she went back to log in and find out what cruel trick awaited her.

Her desktop looked the same... She poured through the Control Panel, looking to see if any suspicious programs had been installed. Nothing. She checked the task list; it all seemed normal. Her mouse moved as she expected. The system didn't seem especially slow. Her home page in Internet Explorer was what she expected.

But there had to be something. She was sure of it. We wouldn't be laughing so hard if there wasn't something, right?

She spent the whole day using her computer carefully, as if it were a bomb about to go off. She insisted Ken and I had done something, over our protests. At one point her PC crashed and had to be rebooted; she suspected it had to do with what we had done, but nothing obvious linked a normal crash with any kind of prank.

She invested a lot of energy into looking for something that was not there.

Because, in truth, all I had done was log in as administrator... and log back out again. Her paranoia had done all the rest. I was being honest when I had implied we had just logged on.

It was the best prank I had ever pulled. • 10:04 AM 2 comments

Mixed emotions

Kevin picked me up from work, as a surprise, for no other reason than he happened to be going by my office near the time I was ending my work day. Oh, and he just wanted to see me.

He'd had some dental work done the previous day, by a dentist who can fairly be described as "brutally direct", and his jaw still hurt. He had a bruise on his lower lip from the implement that the dentist had used to pull his mouth open.

Within minutes of getting into the passenger seat of his car, and before we had gone even two city blocks, I had said or done something that caused him to laugh, then clutch his cheek in pain and groan.

"I can't laugh or smile," he said.

Deadpan, I said "Oh, I see. You hadn't had enough torture from this dentist. You just had to go and compound the pain by hanging out with your friend Brian. Because he's so damned serious."

Kevin bit his lip. Which triggered another expression of suppressed hurt. • 6:49 AM 3 comments

Union blues

Under discussion last night at my union meeting was a motion to reduce the monthly stipend for union officers, as a show of solidarity for the rest of the membership. And I was struck by how contentious this was, considering how progressive and supportive the membership had been recently. Were there really people arguing forcefully to keep $7 a month in their own pockets, when that money saved could be used to help another laid-off member down the road buy groceries or keep their health benefits? Was a few dollars going to make that much of a difference for them?

Earlier this month, AFSCME Local 88 had proposed a one-year wage freeze for its membership, as a cost-cutting measure to save some union jobs. To the best of my knowledge, none of the other County unions have proposed a similar measure, so I am very proud of my union leadership for being ahead of the curve on this.

We not only proposed it, we voted on it and decided, together, overwhelmingly, that it was a good idea. It passed, and that means that the layoffs will be fewer (though not entirely eliminated), and the Board of County Commissioners has agreed to a number of concessions in light of our agreement. First, that the money saved (which is estimated to be around $6-7 million) will be used specifically for Local 88 jobs, that management will provide an accounting of both the money saved and the jobs saved (gotta love some accountability), and that, since in some areas of the county the management to represented ratios are so out of whack, any cuts will address the inequity (in other words, please layoff those managers who supervise only a handful of people before cutting line workers who actually get shit done).

Back to the motion under consideration. My local pays a small stipend to its leadership and stewards. In years past, it was enough to recoup the dues we paid, but it was only paid to active stewards; you had to attend the meetings, minimum. And most stewards did more than that; they served as information conduits, they answered questions about the contract, they dealt with grievances and challenged management on different issues, they volunteered and put in extra time not just to help the local and the membership but the community at large. For stewards, the stipend was reduced last year to $32 a month.

I am a steward, but I haven't gotten the stipend in years. I am still active but it's difficult for me to get to the meeting place. The money wasn't ever that important to me. But because of the looming layoffs and financial crunch, last night I decided to attend. And I'm glad I did.

Because there was a level of hostility and resentment in the room during discussion of this motion that I clearly did not understand. The idea was to show the membership that, yes, we've asked them to tighten their belts, and now, so shall we. It seemed like a slam dunk to me.

Until one of my union brothers stood up and explained that he was one of the lowest-paid members, that he was the main source of income for his family, and that he did not like the idea that the more highly paid members were taking more money from his pocket for a symbolic gesture.

What was class envy doing here?

Local 88, like all the other AFSCME unions, has already put into place a proportional system of dues; it's a percentage of your income. You make more, you pay more dues. There's a cap, though, and upper limit to how much you can pay. And my union brother was arguing that caps are all well and good, but why isn't there a floor, too.

I'm in the upper half of the pay scale, since I'm in IT. I don't consider myself very highly paid, but if I had to support a family on my income things would be very tight. I've made decisions not to subject anyone else to my financial management skills (or mis-management skills) but I also understand that not everyone makes the same decisions I make. Life happens and you've got to deal with what comes up; a spouse, kids, medical bills, car accidents. Situations, if you're speaking passively. A shitstorm, if you're speaking like a person.

I wanted to get up and speak in favor of the motion. I wanted to explain that I've been a steward and I haven't gotten any stipend, that I do it because I want to help my brothers and sisters and bring a little democracy to the workplace.

But I realized that even if I deliberately handed back my stipend, it wouldn't help the lowest-paid members directly. I realized that I would be seen as... what? An elitist?

My union brother outlined all the dollars he would not see because he would not get a step increase next year, nor a cost of living adjustment. He was counting dollars he did not have and holding that against the rest of us. That did not feel, to me, like he particularly cared for helping out the rest of the union. It sounded like he was grabbing for every single dollar he could get.

I did not get a chance to speak before the question was called and it was put to a vote. By a counted show of hands, the vote was 2 to 1 against the motion, meaning we would not be reducing the stipend this year.

The disconnect between the recent vote to implement a pay freeze, and the contentious arguments last night over seven bucks a month shocked me. But then I remembered that the tally on the pay freeze vote was closer than I expected: 63% yes, and 37% no. More than a third of my brothers and sisters needed that money in their pocket and prioritized that over helping anyone else keep their jobs and their benefits during this horrible Great Recession. And now, at our general membership meeting, I was seeing that same attitude.

On this night, however, that attitude prevailed, to my shame.

I do not know what message that will send to the membership at large, but I want it clear that I voted to reduce the potential money in my pocket, and that I will be attending the meetings but not taking the stipend for the coming year out of principle. • 6:43 AM 1 comments

Home of the jazz

My 17 year old nephew, like me, loves "Futurama". We've both seen every episode multiple times and can quote from it extensively. Mostly quotes from Bender Bending Rodriguez, the smoking, drinking robot.

Since the final direct-to-DVD movie came out recently, after I watched it (and was saddened that a show I loved went out on such a sour note), I texted my nephew to find out if he'd seen it and what he thought.

He replied, "No not yet. I'm in St. Louis right now."¹

...which came as a complete surprise to me. "What?? Cool?! Send pics if you can!"

He replied "OK can do. Also there are quite a lot of people with crosses on their forehead. What does it mean?"

"It's a Catholic thing. Today is Ash Wednesday. They get blessed and a priest puts ashes on their forehead." I knew, since my nephew is an atheist like me, that this would puzzle and amuse him. I sent a second text asking him why he was in St. Louis.

I was right. He sent back, "Raquetball nationals. Oh and religion is dumb."

He pretty much calls them as he sees them... I wouldn't put it quite so bluntly but I have to admit the symbolism of Ash Wednesday escapes me.

---

¹ I've corrected any typos in his (or my) original texts. • 6:08 AM 0 comments

Real gentlemanly

Tracy, Ken and I had just finished lunch at Taco del Mar, and were gathering the energy to head back to work for the last half of a sunny Friday.

I stood near the door, drink in hand, while Tracy went to the fountain to get a refill and Ken dumped our garbage into the tray. Shortly, he joined me and we made small talk. Near the door.

Three beautiful women walked up to the door, bags of to-go food and drinks in their hands. They shuffled items around to have and empty hand, pulled open the door, and then turned around to help the one behind them keep the door from swinging shut on them. As graceful as these women probably were, normally... it looked clumsy and awkward.

At no time did Ken or I pause in our conversation as we stood there, chatting back and forth, both of us watching mesmerized just one step away as these three women navigated the door with their hands full of food.

When Tracy returned, I snapped out of my trance long enough to play back what had just happened.

At no time... did Ken or I... pause... to help them.

At no time. • 6:45 AM 0 comments

My email to President Obama

President Obama:

Why are contracts so sacred for AIG but not for the UAW? Why are laws so important when it comes to executive bonuses but not for those we know approved torture and indefinite imprisonment? Please reply soon; our country is going broke and we're losing credibility.

Sent via the White House contact page just minutes ago. Have I mentioned how much I love having a President who gets email?

Labels: lettertoObama

• 5:27 PM 0 comments

My second favorite Shamrock Run story ever

Kevin is not a runner, although he would like to be. The opening minutes of the race on Sunday were at a walking pace for both of us, due to the huge number of other people. But once we got past the starting line, we could move to a slow jog, still dodging all the other people but now spread out enough to give us room, he in runner's shorts and Nike Shox, me in my kilt and Brooks Adrenalines.

But it still was a bit fast for him, and I've been training half-way decently; before even a quarter-mile, he needed to walk and I was ready to go.

"Go, go!" he said. "I'll be OK."

"I'll be on the left-hand side as you cross the finish line," I said, and then I moved forward and didn't look back.

Literally.

Even when I heard giggly girl voices behind me a few minutes later.

Girl 1: I just want to find a hot guy, and follow him.

Girl 2: There's one! In the kilt!

My immediate reaction was Oh, they're mocking me. I am short, pudgy, balding, and I've got esteem issues to boot¹. But they didn't sound like they were mocking me; they were giving me props for being brave enough to wear a kilt today. So I was able to talk my negative voice down from the mental ledge and take it as a compliment.

Especially as they continued:

Girl 1: Him? That's hot!

Girl 2: (shouted) I love your kilt!

I didn't turn around. I just smiled and held up my hand, making the circular OK sign, and waved.

I could still hear them talking, though.

Girl 1: That kilt's really cute.

Girl 2: We should have worn kilts!

Girl 1: Next year, we should totally wear mini kilts!

I immediately pictured hot runner girls in tiny mini kilts and tied-off white t-shirts, running behind me.

I then pictured myself next year (in much better shape) running the Shamrock Run with an entourage of hot runner girls all dressed in matching mini-kilts. That might even be enough motivation for Kevin to keep up with me for the whole race... Or get my other friends to join me.

How do I make that happen next year?² I'll even spring for the kilts...

---

¹ That's a joke. At my own expense, but still meant for humor.

² No, I didn't talk to them again after that, or try to find them after the race. I'm kinda single-focused like that. • 6:07 AM 0 comments

My most favorite Shamrock Run story ever

After the off-and-on rain of Saturday, Sunday morning arrived dark, windy, and rainy. And cold.

I still got up, though, and got dressed in my finest (and only) kilt. Kevin and I were running in the Shamrock Run 5K. Kevin had run it with me last year, and wanted to do it again. Though he had called me Friday evening, worried about the weather forecast of rain for Sunday morning.

He got what he had worried about, all right. It was coming down in buckets while I waited for him to pick me up.

Joking about the bad weather helped cheer us up, and we drove downtown and found a parking spot. We kept mentioning that we wished it was the part of the day for eating the giant post-race celebratory breakfast, like we were reading each other's minds.

Walking towards Waterfront Park and Front Ave., we passed a group of older men and women, dressed in green, with green beads and hats and some of the men in kilts, like me. They were taking shelter under an overhang. One of the ladies saw us, and me in my kilt, and called us over. "You look so cute in your kilt, I want to give you one of these," she said, and held out her hand. Draped over her arm were two silver chains, each suspending a little green plastic shot glass. "And you get one, too," she said, gesturing at Kevin, "because you're his friend!"

"Oh, right on!" I said, "thank you!" Kevin and I put the chains around our necks.

I held mine up. "Y'know... it'd be nice to have a little somethin'-somethin' in here to warm us up for the race..." I was joking, but the gentleman standing next to me smiled and said, "You're right! What'll you have?"

I said, "Some scotch would be nice" and he waved over a friend, who pulled out a clear flask with brown liquid from a backpack.

"It's only a single-malt..." the man said as he put a little shot in our glasses. One for me, Kevin, the man in the kilt, and the man with the flask got some, too. We raised our glasses in a toast, and downed the unmarked liquor.

It was smooth. And damned if it didn't actually warm me up! Suddenly, even though the rain and wind had not stopped, I felt a little warm glow radiate from my stomach outward. One of the group took me and the other kilt-wearing gentleman's picture (I should have given my email address so he could send me a copy but did not), and Kevin and I left to go get in place for the race, which was starting in 10 minutes.

A shot of scotch, a run, and a beer chaser. What could be better? • 12:39 PM 1 comments

RSS stands for "frustration"

Somehow, Blogger broke RSS feeds on Friday or late Thursday. I don't know what happened on their end, but the XML files that get pushed out to Blogger users' sites that rely on FTP/SFTP publishing are zero-byte (or empty) files.

And that's not right. Not at all.

If you search the "Something is Broken" group for Blogger help for the terms "RSS" or "feed" you get lots and lots of separate threads, and all the users reporting basically the same thing I summarized above. I settled on updating this thread with my own specific information, and watched it all day yesterday for some kind of official Blogger response. None came.

However, the user "nitecruzer", a.k.a. Chuck, proposed a workaround. He found out a different address for the RSS feeds for a Blogger-published site and, armed with the internal blog ID # for my blog, I was able to access the RSS feed for my site and redirect it to/through Feedburner.

Long story short: my RSS feed has changed. I don't really know how to let people who read my site via the old feed know this, however. But if you wander over here because you haven't seen me update in a while, please take a moment to update your feed reader by using the following link:

Main site feed for Lunar Obverse

You can also use the link in the right-hand sidebar, labeled "Subscribe". If, however, you see "Feeds", then frakkin' Blogger hasn't updated my site template yet. I made the change an hour ago, and republished my site, but it still hasn't shown up for me. I have no idea why. If you see "Feeds" over there, could you let me know?

Labels: meta

• 3:51 PM 0 comments

Squareup

In Twitter, people have invented a way to tag individual tweets so that they are part of a larger, tagged, group. That method is called "hashtags" because the tag includes a hash mark.

So all the tweets about the Twitter meetup (or "tweetup") at the KGW Studio on the Square yesterday evening are tagged "#squareup".

If one searches Twitter for #squareup, one would see all the tweets about the event.

Isn't that cool?

KGW has converted the old Powell's Travel Books location, a bunker under Portland's living room (a.k.a., Pioneer Courthouse Square), into a remote studio. And Wednesday night, the people behind their Live at 7 show, Stephanie Stricklen and Aaron Weiss, invited all their Twitter followers to come see the new space.

There were a lot of people there, more than I expected. The little studio was full of people I've interacted with, but have not met in person.

There were three exceptions: Neva, whose birthday party I went to a couple of weeks ago, and who seemed to see me as a familiar face in a sea of new faces.

Second was Aaron, who works for the county in the same building as I do. Aaron and I have been in the same meetings, and interacted on blogs in the past, but never formally introduced ourselves to each other until last night. (I expected Aaron to sound like Seth Rogen but he doesn't; he sounds like Aaron).

And, of course, Christopher Frankonis, The One True B!x, a Portland blogging star, whom I have seen in public previously; I finally shook his hand and introduced myself.

I got a hug from Stephanie Stricklen, and I got to tell the Director of Programming for KGW that I'd like them to do more local politics and reporting. I got to chat with a producer for the show about getting local musicians into the studio for concerts and shows. We, as a group, gave advice to the talent for the station on how to best make use of Twitter for their reporters - the basic idea being, let each individual reporter do what they want with their Twitter accounts, and just collect them all on the main KGW web page. Don't restrict them in what they talk about. If they want to just talk about the stories they work on, let them. If they want to talk about their pregnancy and where they had dinner, (like Steph), let them.

The whole point of Twitter (OK, one of the points of Twitter) is that you can follow or not follow people for whatever reason you want. Me, the bulk of people I follow are interesting in one way or another, and the bulk of those people are local. But other people might have different ideas on what makes others interesting or worth following. It's about finding an individual voice.

So far, the best part of Twitter, for me, is that it's led to meeting great people in person.

I took a few pictures of the event, and you can find more and better pictures of the event here.

The remote studio is small but packed with tech. The cameras are all robotic monsters that are controlled remotely from SW 15th and Jefferson, and directed into place via a rail marked with barcodes (which I tripped over and knocked out of place - sorry, Aaron!) There's a raised desk that, I believe, Steph said she would never use. There's a big green screen for doing weather in front of, a technical skill that is difficult for me to imagine doing gracefully. And nearly everyone commented that it would not be long before people, regular people in the Square, would be flashing and mugging for the cameras in front of the windows.

Which, I believe, is the real-world outcome of what D.J., KGW General Manager, described as "being connected with the community." Right on! • 6:06 AM 0 comments

Not as rare as you'd think

Kevin and I were out and about, and driving around the Hawthorne area looking for a parking spot. Destination: Powell's on Hawthorne.

He pulled onto a side street, and while I was looking at him and saying something, I interrupted myself and pointed out his side window. "She's a stripper." He turned, looked, and saw a tall, dark beauty with a crimson swatch in her hair crossing in the middle of the street.

I told Kevin her stage name, and mentioned that she's on my MySpace friends list. Kevin was interested (though not beyond the bounds of basic curiosity), so after he parked, I pulled out my iPhone and showed him some of her pictures and related what little I know about her. "She's... well, she's probably not calling herself a 'Republican' anymore, 'cause the Republican Party is in steep decline. But she's anti-Obama, and pro-gun, and all the other generic Republican talking points. But, damn, she's got an amazing pair of (as far as I know) natural breasts."

I joke that spotting strippers in their street clothes is fairly common because Portland is reputed to have a very high ratio of strip club per capita (which urban legend has been examined and found wanting). That means, to me, that any random attractive woman I see is likely to have been, is currently, or will be in the future, a stripper.

But maybe I just see strippers more often because I go to strip clubs a lot? Maybe it's me? I'm so tuned in to the talent working at the various clubs I frequent, I recognize them more often than regular people?

Last evening, I was riding home on the bus, tired and a bit overwhelmed by the group I had just left (about which I'll write later). I was sitting in the seat right in front of the rear door, surfing on my iPhone, zoning out. The bell rang, the driver pulled over, the rear door opened, and a voice called out, "Thank you!"

The voice tickled my memory.

That voice was in a normal everyday tone of voice. But the last time I heard it, it was cooing and giggling in an assumed, but entertaining, tone of voice. In fact, the only times I had ever heard it. Or should I say, "heard her."

I looked out the window, and, sure enough, saw yet another stripper, dressed in normal street clothes, walking down the sidewalk and away from the bus.

It happens nearly every day. Don't you wish you lived here? • 6:31 AM 0 comments

Arcade

Wil Wheaton went nuts over some recordings of kids playing arcade games. I haven't listened to them yet, so Wheaton may be justified in his nuts-going, I don't know.

What I do know is that Wheaton's mania for nostalgia is parallel to my own lately. So I found the ending to Wheaton's post a bit more thought-provoking, and, hopefully, worthy of a small post.

He posed the question of choosing, to own for your very own, any four arcade games, and what would they be? Oh, and a pinball machine.

I never really enjoyed pinball the way I enjoyed arcade games so I immediately modified it to be any five arcade games. Even then, I had trouble picking just five. Here's the list that first came off the top of my head:

1. Pole Position (sit down version)
   
2. Battlezone (stand up version)
   
3. Elevator Action
   
4. Asteroids Deluxe
   
5. Tempest
   

Three of the five are vector-based graphics games. Only one (Elevator Action) features personal violence - the rest are abstracted violence (very much abstracted in the sense of competitive racing for Pole Position). And all of them feature a simple, single goal, rather than complex story-telling. They're just games where the point is to survive and do as much damage as you can (or race as long as you can go).

And they all date to 1980-1983 - the years I went to high school.

Every single one of those games, at one point, were installed in the local 7-11, and I must have spent hours and hours, and quarter after quarter, playing each and every one of them, oblivious to anything else, mesmerized by the flashing lights. Most times I would be wearing headphones and listening to a mix tape of some sort, songs recorded off the radio, which would explain the lack of any songs not cut from the corporate commercialist cookie-cutter, ugh. It wouldn't be until later that I discovered that there was a lot of awesome music that did not get played on Portland radio stations...

Blowing up asteroids, or stylized tanks, or shooting enemy spies, all stood in for whatever it was that I was avoiding out in the real world.

If only I had any idea what it was, exactly, I was avoiding?

What would my life, or anyone's life, be like without video games? It would be irresponsible of me to speculate. • 8:23 AM 0 comments

Meditative running

I woke several times last night. I think I was hungry. Yesterday morning I ate a huge brunch at my new favorite place, the Delta (cheddar grits are tasty! And beignets with lemon cream!), then sat around and whined to myself about how rainy, hail-y, and cold it was outside. Basically I was trying to talk myself out of going for the long run I had planned on.

It almost worked, too. By 5 PM, I thought it was going to be dark soon. I had forgotten about Daylight Savings Time, though. Crap, I realized, it's not going to get dark until after 7 PM! Plus, actual blue sky appeared and the rain stopped.

With a nudge from friends, I was dressed and out in the sun, and, as predicted, I warmed up soon enough.

I kept my pace manageable and even, and if I felt myself getting too out of breath, I slowed my pace but did not walk. And out of the 5 full miles I ran, three of them were under 10 minutes each, which is pretty good since taking a break due to injury a few weeks back.

At one point, tiny bits of hail started hinting at possibly maybe falling on me. I thought it would get worse, and as I considered it, my feet still pounding the pavement, I realized that I was near the half-way point and a little hail would not stop me. But the full hailstorm never arrived, and in retrospect it might have simply been some residual hail being blown off the tree branches along that section of street.

I finished 5.4 miles in 0:55:37, for an average pace of 10:16 per mile.

My reward was an applewood smoked bacon and white cheddar burger (and fries!) from Mike's Drive-In, while watching the Sunday night cartoons.

And dreams of not being able to sleep. Dreams of having difficulty waking. And waking up from those dreams and having trouble getting back to sleep.

I think I was still hungry... • 6:14 AM 2 comments

Past as prologue

In 1985, I was 20 years old.

Of all the factors that our society considered the hallmarks of adulthood, I had some but not others. No job, no car, unable to drink alcohol legally, still living with my parents. Yet I could vote, I had a steady, long-term girlfriend, whom I had met in high school. I was not a virgin. And I could think.

I knew that I was a citizen of the United States, and that the country and the leadership of my county were locked in a deadly enmity with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, and that the weapon of choice for expressing that animosity was the nuclear bomb. Both my country and the enemy had access to nukes; horrible weapons that did not just destroy the target, large targets, targets the size of large cities, but which also rendered the targets uninhabitable for decades, centuries, and caused deformations and illness in any victim unlucky enough to have survived the initial blast.

And both sides didn't just have one or two or a dozen of these bombs. They had hundreds. More than were necessary to merely "win" a "war". Enough to wipe each other out, and every ally, and everyone else, all over the world.

The strategy being pursued by my government, and the enemy (my government told me), for prevailing over the enemy was astonishingly insane: the strategy was to build more and more of these bombs, in order to scare the other side into not using their own bombs.

The madness that you and I now live under, the madness that caused men in caves to fly a jetliner full of innocents into large buildings, and the madness that caused our country's leadership to respond by invading a country they despised but had not direct connection to the attack of the men in caves, is almost understandable compared to my memories of the Cold War. Almost.

But back in 1985, it was such a horrible dark cloud hanging over the heads of all Americans that our responses were, by and large, anger. Punk rock is hard to define, but for me it will always include an anti-authoritarian, cynical, and political viewpoint, along with the feeling that, if we're all going to die we might as well have fun. And punk rock was born under the threat of mutually assured destruction.

Punk rock was part of a sub-culture that included comic books and bad movies. And in contrast to the conduit that the internet gives to making sure sub-cultures reach everyone interested today, back in 1985 sub-cultures were both more tightly-knit and harder to find and join. I had few people with which to discuss the paltry few comic books I read. I had few people with which to pick apart the lyrics to a song by the Clash or Bad Religion. I had to come to my own conclusions, by and large, about what, exactly, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were outlining in their 12-issue limited series "Watchmen".

I didn't get it at first. I didn't understand that the characters of Ozymandias, Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan were created out of whole cloth, with a complete backstory (there were previous versions of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre). I didn't see the depth that the Tales of the Black Freighter, a story of pirates and survival at sea, gave to the main story of the Mask Killer.

But I did understand the alienation of John "Dr. Manhattan" Osterman, a man who was given nearly unlimited power and found himself more and more detached from the fragile people around him. I did understand the Doomsday Clock, which gave us all a sense of how close we were to annihilation by nuclear holocaust, and its use in the comic. I did feel deeply affected by the depiction of heroes as sociopaths: the Comedian and Rorschach had their bizarre twisted ideas of right and wrong, each a viewpoint I could see in those around me. Kids I grew up with who worshipped the guns and armor used in Vietnam without understanding or caring about the human cost of the same. Cops who saw evil and crime everywhere but never looked at how far into criminality they themselves descended. I saw the point of asking who polices the policemen; how do we hold accountable those who we entrust with our safety so that we can remain free?

And, of course, the madness of trying to win a nuclear war.

Who the Hell were these people? Were they really the same species as me? Yes, I often felt anger and disillusionment, but it nearly always turned inward. If I were faced with a Darth Vader, a dark father intent on corrupting me, I would respond as Luke Skywalker did in "The Empire Strikes Back" and fall to my doom rather than fight back. Protecting myself by wiping myself out, and fuck all y'all; you're on your own.

I had no goals, I could see no future, beyond hoping I was still around next week, next month, next year.

I read every issue of Watchmen while standing in the 7-11 near my house. Standing in front of a wire rack in a convenience store, plate glass in front of me showing the ebb and tide of cars and customers in and out of the parking lot and the flow of traffic on the street beyond, hearing the bells and beeps of the video games and pinball machines off in the corner, and needing the brief escape from the emptiness of the rest of my life.

Yesterday I sat in a theater, beside my best friend from those days, and watched Zak Snyder's adaptation of "Watchmen". Many were the moments I remembered the kid I used to be; the feeling of the paper beneath my fingers, the look of four-color printing showing earlier versions of the scenes digitally projected onto the screen in front of me. I had not read the books in years, many years, and yet Snyder's faithfulness to the comic's words and images meant many small nostalgic moments during the 163 minute film's run.

I want to know if anyone whose experience doesn't include the hopelessness of living under threat of the entire world coming to an end can feel the same thing I felt watching the movie and recalling that I and everyone I know and everyone else might die due to the insanity of my government's idea of defense. I want to know if anyone who didn't try to escape entirely into a fantasy world, learning the ins and outs of costumed heroes and Jedi Knights and paladins and rangers and rogues, can feel what I feel when seeing those fantasies being portrayed by living human beings. Is that possible?

Are these feelings I have... nostalgia? That's what I felt when watching "Watchmen". So lost I was, and the world was, then.

Not sure we've come very far since then, either.

Labels: movies

• 3:10 PM 0 comments

More of this? Why?

I had about 20 minutes to kill until my bus arrived. I was cold. Wanted something warm. There was a Starbucks nearby, with free wifi and hot coffee.

There's always a Starbucks nearby.

But I wanted decaffeinated since Dr. Carl has told me to cut back, and the three cups of coffee I had eaten with breakfast were probably my limit.

The last several attempts to order decaf at this specific Starbucks had been marred by a complete lack of decaf, which news was delivered with an apologetic tone of voice but no real explanation. In each previous case, I had been offered a decaf Americano, which I had sometimes accepted with resignation, and sometimes declined along with any other option.

I waited my turn, and when the black and green clad employee asked me what I wanted, I said, "Tall decaf, please, with room."

The boy barista (baristo?) half-turned towards their brewed coffee, then turned back with a familiar faux-sad expression. "I'm sorry, we don't have any decaf. We stop brewing it after a certain point."

Still smiling my I-expected-this-answer-but-it's-not-OK smile, I sighed and said, "OK, give me a tall decaf Americano, with room" and handed over a couple bucks. As he rang me up, I said, "This is the fourth time I've come here and you haven't had decaf."

The girl making the espresso drinks piped up. "They told us not to, anymore."

Baristo handed back my change and kept talking. "I guess they figured that we just don't sell enough of it."

I shook my head, smiling faintly, and stepped back so the next customer could order.

The baristo said, faux-sympathetically, "You're not the only one!" Really? That's the exact opposite of the excuse you had before, you know, I thought, either no one buys it or lots of people ask for it. Which is it?

"Sure, great," I said, "but it still disappoints me." They? I thought, who are they? Is that corporate? "I'll just have to tell them that." I tried to project a sense of I-know-it's-not-your-fault-but-it's-still-not-OK-but-please-don't-spit-in-my-drink as I walked over to the espresso-drink waiting area.

The girl ahead of me had ordered lots of drinks for a big group of people, and when she was done collecting them, finally the girl behind the counter called out, "Tall Americano!" and set a drink on the ledge.

I walked over, put my hand on the cup, and said, "You mean 'tall decaf Americano,' right?"

She turned the cup around to see what was written on it, her face falling. "Oh! No... I didn't see it," as the baristo called from the cash register, "Yeah, that's supposed to be a decaf!"

Honestly, I wasn't upset so much as amused. How much more wrong could this transaction go? I now looked like the customer from Hell, even though I thought my requests were well within the bounds of reason. The blockage wasn't me, and the initial problem was up the corporate ladder somewhere, and this current blip was an honest mistake. Still, everything was conspiring to turn it all into a Really Big Deal. I smiled wanly, then stepped aside so she could make me the right drink.

The baristo, who had some experience in these things, told the girl to keep the Americano because someone would probably order one soon enough. Lucky customer!

She completed my drink and brought it out; she handed me a coupon at the same time, worth one free drink next time. I thanked her, then walked to the condiment area. Yay, a free drink. If I had been really unsatisfied, would a reason to visit again in the future really be the trick to turn me around? Luckily, I'm addicted, and Starbucks are everywhere. I tucked the coupon away for later.

I waited for the clueless elderly Asian couple to finish stirring their coffees and adding their flavorings, then stepped up. Everyone has a routine, a little coffee meditation, a ritual they perform. Mine is: take the lid off, pour in a little half-and-half, tear open and pour in two packets of turbinado sugar, stir thoroughly, replace the lid so the cup seam is on the back.

Only this time, it went like this: take off the lid, reach for the half-and-half... of the two stainless steel pitchers, one was labeled "2%" and one was labeled "Whole milk". No half-and-half. Oh, this is an easy fix, I thought, and turned to the girl. "There's no half-and-half," I said, as gently as I could after the customer catastrophe earlier.

And she gave me the face again, the one that says she's really really sorry, but... "We ran out of half-and-half, we don't have any."

I couldn't help it. I laughed. Loud. Hard. I hope I didn't hurt her feelings. It was simply absurd. I turned back to the condiments area and reached for the 2%, while the girl continued to explain that she had used the last of their half-and-half to make someone else's drink. Now I started to notice more little touches to this comedy: there was no turbinado sugar so I used regular white sugar; in their urge to satisfy me they had not given me a cup with room as I'd originally asked, meaning I had to pour some out to make room (which, if the employees had seen, probably felt like salt in the wound but was simply me being practical); and when I stirred, I got a little hot coffee on my fingers.

I intend to send an email to corporate telling them about my experience and the contradictory "we don't sell enough decaf so that's why we often disappoint our customers" reason I was given. I've had reasonable responses to complaints to Starbucks previously.

I'll leave the entire story here, though, for your delight, to live on the internet for as long as the internet lives. • 6:31 PM 2 comments

Lifeboat

I sat on the edge of the small conference room, along with about twenty of my union brothers and sisters, while we listened to our union president, Becky, and vice president, Michael, discuss what leadership was proposing we do to save our employer money, and therefore save jobs.

Of course, unions being a democracy (the only democratic (small d) institution in the workplace meant that first, the union membership had to vote to approve any plans the union executive board put forth. That vote was early next week. And to our benefit, my union appears to be among the few in the county that are taking pro-active steps to save jobs; others have been taking a "wait and see" line.

The twenty people in this room, this one "brown bag" session, represented such a tiny fraction of the total membership, so I was unable to gauge the mood of the entire voting block from the mood of this handful of people. But the people in this room felt overwhelmingly pro-job-saving.

Except for one, outspoken, angry, defensive woman, who kept chastising Becky for not doing "more", trying to get "more" out of management in this severe economic downturn. Like what? She mentioned more vacation time, more sick time, a promise to get the money lost back next year if things turn around...

I found her greed a bit overwhelming, and after the meeting, my friend Ken summed it up best by saying, "She sees it as the union vs. management, when in reality it's the union and management vs. the recession."

Quite so. • 6:14 AM 0 comments

Sub-domain-er

And now, a little bit of meta, behind-the-scenes tech talk.

A week and a half ago my site had a little downtime. The cause was a result of the dynamic IP address that was assigned to Eggers¹, my web server, was a little too dynamic: it changed, without warning, putting my site on a little cul-de-sac on the internet.

I was able to move my content over to another server I had, on a slower connection, temporarily. And since then, I've moved everything back to Eggers, but I've left my site content on my secondary server, Lethem², as a backup.

I've been slowly working on the backend stuff necessary to have my backup server automatically mirror the main one, and to act in the future as a failover in case something goes wrong again in the future. And, knowing technology, something will fail in the future.

Not all of it is in place yet, but I'm kind of proud of the fact that I know have sub-domains to my main address on the internet. eggers.bamoon.com points to my main server, and lethem.bamoon.com points to my secondary. I've got each server emailing me their current IP address at 1 AM in the morning, every morning, and it checks against the previous day's address and sends a separate alert if it changes.

Next step is to implement a script, using Mac OS X's launchd(8) to copy the primary over to the secondary if the primary has updated. In order to make that work best, I need to upgrade both servers to Mac OS X 10.5 - they've been running 10.4.11 since their inception.

I would not call myself a Unix or command-line guru or wizard - at best, I'm a padawan, still learning and not yet a master. But I've been learning all sorts of new stuff:

• I've learned a lot about using crontab(1) to run scripts on a regular basis. Unfortunately, crontab(1) is deprecated on Mac OS X - the functions of it are in Apple's replacement, the previously-mentioned launchd(8), and launchd(8) adds more, to boot.
  
• Because the default editor for crontab(1) is the viciously-user-unfriendly text editor vi(1), ugh, I've been learning how to do basic editing in that.
  
• In the process of setting up my sub-domains, and having my main domain point to two different IP addresses and two different servers, I've learned a lot more about how DNS, the internet's address book system, works; like how I can have multiple A records in a single DNS entry, to utilize DNS's ability to load-balance traffic.
  
• And, of course, I've learned more about how to write shell scripts, since those are what do all the heavy lifting of mirroring each server, checking IP addresses and notifying me about any changes.
  
• This may seem like a simple thing, but since Unix-y (and Mac OS X is Unix-y - well, technically, BSD-y - at its core) operating systems are configured by simple text files, being able to manipulate and make changes to lots of different text files quickly and efficiently is a key skill. To that end, rather than wrestle with vi(1) all the time (or, more correctly, in addition to wrestling with vi(1)), I've learned how to use the command-line tool sed(1) to do fast search-and-replace on multiple text files with one fell swoop.
  

...and in these hard economic times, learning new skills is always a good thing. Anyone need any web server work done? Anyone? I work cheap while I'm still learning...

---

¹ Everyone has a naming convention for their hardware. Mine is to name my computers and computing devices after favorite authors; in this case, my main web server is named after Dave Eggers, author of "A Heartbreaking Tale of Staggering Genius" and others.
² This server is named after Jonathan Lethem, an incredibly dark and brilliant author.

Labels: meta

• 6:04 AM 0 comments

How can this be?

While doing some light cleaning around the house this weekend, I noticed that my vacuum cleaner wasn't the best. I bought it on the cheap, and it doesn't always pick up dirt and paper shreds and whatnot from my new carpet.

And I thought, "my vacuum cleaner sucks."

And I laughed.

Because sucking is pretty much what a vacuum cleaner is supposed to do.

I spent a few minutes working on how someone could express that their cleaning instrument wasn't very good at what it was designed to do, and it made me laugh.

"My vacuum cleaner sucks" and "my vacuum cleaner doesn't suck" have both the same meaning, and the opposite meaning. At the same time.

I thought of "flammable" and "inflammable" and how, even though the prefix "in-" usually reverses the meaning of the word to which it is affixed, in this one case, it does not. But it's not entirely the same because the two words just seem like they should mean the opposite. They don't.

Not like the "vacuum/suck" conundrum.

I wonder if the Language Log folk have ever talked about this? • 6:33 AM 0 comments

One to Ten

I was thinking about how rude some people can be, when I stopped to consider where they would fall on the canonical 1 to 10 scale.

Of course, when assigning a level of rudeness on the 1 to 10 scale, you have to think about what the extreme ends of the scale represent. In this case, the 1 would represent "polite", which is the least rude one can be.

But then I tried to figure out what the high end of the scale would be. What would 10 on the rude scale be? Would it be the rudest person ever, like, say, Andrew Dice Clay's public persona, or even Rush Limbaugh? Someone who is barely socialized and whose every utterance is designed to shock and dismay?

The problem is, I kept thinking of more and more examples of people who were even ruder than that... like, say, Osama bin Laden, or Dick Cheney. But then we're getting into a definitional gray area: are they rude or are they simply evil?

And I decided that there was no way to assign a top end to the 1 to 10 scale of rudeness. Rudeness, it turns out, is somewhere in the middle on some other scale, a moral scale.

It's kinda funny like that. • 6:33 AM 0 comments

My most popular status

On Friday, I had a stoopid headache that may or may not have been a migraine. It was painful, and I felt like throwing up, and I was light sensitive. Also grumpy; I chose not to inflict my presence on my friends for the normal Friday night Battlestar Galactica showing at the Bagdad.

But some say that since I was still conscious and was able to watch TV (albeit in the dark, curled up on the couch like I was re-inventing the fetal position), that it was not an actual migraine.

So I updated my status on Facebook (and MySpace, too, but as you'll see, all the fun was over on Facebook) to read:

"Brian is starting his weekend with a migraine."

This turned out to be the most popular status update I've even posted. I got seven responses to it from six different friends. I got expressions of sympathy ("Your pain. I feels it."), denial ("It's not a migraine. It's all in your head!"), enthusiasm ("Fantastic! You know how to par-tay!")

All of which were more than welcome. Still, I have to give the random award of Best Response to a Complaint of Pain to Nicole's "Maybe it's a tumor..."



I'm here to tell all y'all... It's not a tumor!

Hope you all had a great weekend! • 6:30 AM 0 comments

"Coraline" IN 3D

Neil Gaiman, author of the book "Coraline", has this to say on the subject of where to sit when watching a 3D movie:

"@lunarobverse for 3D movies you don't normally want to be in the front couple of rows, and middle's seems preferable."

I have to admit, getting a direct answer from the author of the book that was translated into a movie to my question about where to sit has me feeling more than a little bit fanboy-ish.

I love the immediate feeling of connection I get from Twitter. I actually posted my question while waiting in the lobby prior to the movie, while the theater personnel were cleaning the theater, just 20 minutes before the movie was to start. I posted the question from my iPhone, on a whim. And had my answer in plenty of time to adjust where I was sitting to take full advantage of 3D during the film.

Even some of the previews were in 3D, and for the most part, it worked: the preview for "Monsters vs. Aliens" actually looked almost enjoyable from a technical standpoint, although I still suspect it lacks the depth of any random Pixar flick. Except, perhaps, for Pixar's next flick, "Up", which leaves me feeling underwhelmed. Really, Pixar? A movie about a grumpy old man who wants to get away from everyone? Of course, I'll still go see it in the theater, but color me skeptical.

Oh, wait, this was supposed to be a review of "Corline" IN 3D. I got distracted by the special effects for a moment, and the tiny interaction with one of the films' originators.

I have not read the book on which the movie is based, but the film was sufficiently creepy from the very start. Coraline is a little girl who feels neglected by her parents and alienated from her friends and hometown; the family has just moved to a rainy little place called Oregon, and her parents are always grumpy and nose-deep in their writing and computers. Little Coraline goes exploring and soon stumbles on a parallel world where her Other Mother and Other Father are happy, doting, and giving people who cultivate a garden that looks like Coraline and bake all her favorite foods and buy all her choices in clothes and do nothing but play games with her.

So of course the ones who spoil her and lavish attention on her are the bad guys.

Seeing the movie with adult eyes, I felt creeped out by all the attention the Other Mother and Other Father gave to the little girl. I wonder if any of that translated so well to the younger members of the audience. I would be surprised if it did not, though I have only my own instincts to go on.

I'm glad I got to see the movie in 3D; with only a couple of scenes near the beginning and during the end credits, the effect was used to simply give depth and perspective to the movie, and not to shock and reach out of the screen. The level of detail to the world was evident.

I recommend the movie. If you can see it in 3D, more the better - but hurry, because apparently the 3D screens are being slowly replaced with some Disney Jonas Brothers thing. Ugh.

Labels: movies

• 6:47 AM 1 comments