Important People

Yesterday my wife and I ran into two people who were important to us, growing up.

I really need to rephrase that, because it doesn't make it clear what I'm trying to say. These people knew both of us, but never dealt with us when we were "together." And yet we both remember them separately as wonderful people who were important to us getting where we are today.

One was Ed Shaughnessy, who was The Man at our high school. I use the title The Man because whatever his actual title was (Dean of Students? Principal?), his real job as far as I knew was to walk the hallways and act as the father figure to a bunch of blue collar kids with attitude problems. This was the guy who handed out punishments, who told you to "take your goddamn hat off" inside the classroom, and who broke up fights. And this was the guy who got a standing ovation during graduation ceremonies.

Mr. S, as we called him (because that's what his wife called him; see below), was a real rarity. He knew how to talk to kids, how to get results, and how to earn respect. And he'd known it for decades: he was teaching at the school when Jess's parents were students there.

Jess and I weren't problem kids; Mr. S. didn't need to give us a lot of shit. But he still had to keep us in line, and both of us dealt with him on a couple occasions. I specifically remember getting caught typing an obscene poem in typing class (I remember how it started: "A jolly old elf that old saint nick, had a two-foot seven-inch motherfucking dick") while Jess and her friends all showed up late for school one day with permission slips from their parents, and still got in trouble ("I don't care if they're real or not, you can't just skip your first class and get breakfast at Abdow's. You know what'll happen if word gets out this stunt worked? You tell all your classmates you have detention!" [they didn't, of course, but they had to say they did...]).

Anyway. As far as I know, he retired shortly after Jess graduated. A quick web search shows him back at Smith school, though, as athletic director and baseball coach. I'm sure he's still keeping kids in line. Way to go, Mr. S.

The other person we met was Jane Nagle, who taught us English Literature in our Junior and Senior years. Miss Nagle was married to Mr. S., but kept her own last name. She had a talent for recognizing and nurturing independent thought, and rewarded creative expression of ideas, even unpopular ones. I still remember specific classroom discussions from that class, and it was 15 years ago! I still have my journals, my papers, my homework assignments with comments scribbled in the margins. Both Jess and I spoke at our respective high school graduations, and Miss Nagle helped us with our speeches like a nervous hen. She begged us not to embarass Mr S., and of course we ignored her advice and made sure we gave our peers ample opportunity to applaud him.

Miss Nagle didn't earn the same kind of respect Mr S. did, though. Jess and I both remember her very fondly, but I know some other students didn't. She never connected with the "collective consciousness" of the student body with the same ease her husband did. And there may have been some resentment of the way she seemed to play favorites ... it was hard to see that at the time. Still, I feel the environment she created in that Period 1 English Lit class really helped shape me and prepare my mind for higher education.

Miss Nagle didn't stay at Smith School. She had been working on her doctorate for some time, and after Jess graduated she moved on to a new calling -- instead of teaching kids, she's teaching new generations of teachers. A quick web search shows her at Westfield State now.

Seeing them, still happy and together all these years later, was a powerful moment. Mr S. recognized us right away, pointing at us across a crowded room. We shook hands, hugged, made small talk for a couple moments, and went our separate ways. I wish we had talked for a little while longer, but so it goes.

I think they know how important they were to us. And now you do to.

I, Robot

I'll start today with something light: a brief movie review of I, Robot.

I am probably best described as a casual fan of classic sci-fi. I've read the core Foundation novels, spits and spurts of Clarke and Heinlein, and dabbled in a half-dozen other classic authors in bits and pieces. I'm far from an expert, but I've accumulated some exposure over the years.

I went into I, Robot not knowing what to expect. I left it feeling much the same way. I'm not sure the folks making the movie knew what they wanted, or what they got.

First off, Will Smith fails in this role. I don't know how -- but he does. He nails half of his character's personality, but just isn't convincing enough at other times. I can't really blame him, because it seemed like they didn't know what they wanted his character to be.

This is the continuing problem with the movie. Is it an action movie or a deep sci-fi movie? Is it trying to be both (ala The Matrix) or neither? I can't tell, and I'm not sure they could either while making it. They wind up an interesting "hard sci-fi" sort of open-ended story, and then at the same time try to spoon-feed everything to you with a pretty bow and lots of explosions.

The movie basically makes promises it never delivers on, and leaves you wondering what you just watched. It was a solid disappointment, because instead of aiming low and succeeding, or aiming high and failing, it just sort of limps along with uncertain expectations and uncertain delivery.

Am I crazy (work-related)?

So I went to JavaOne a few weeks ago and enjoyed the hell out of San Francisco. Somewhere along the way I actually derived some satisfaction out of being at a conference full of people who shared my profession. This is not something I'm used to. If you know me, you know I'm pretty cynical about "work stuff" in general.

I wrote a 10+ page summary of my time at JavaOne, sent it to my team, and people actually read it and commented on it. I was blown away. But this didn't completely finish me off; I had these weird ideas about how we have this fragmented developer environment and we could be doing much more than we are.

In a moment of weakness, I described some of these ideas to my manager, who thought it would be good for me to put them in a more coherent form.

So I wrote a short little proposal explaining why I felt we needed to improve things, what we should be aiming for, and what specifically we can do to start getting there. I even included some critical comments on our corporate culture. I finished it off by explaining that I didn't really expect this first "system" to change the world overnight, but hoped that in its inevitable failure it might impart some minor changes in attitudes (well, not in those exact words, but you get the point).

Is this the kind of stupid stuff that gets people in hot water? Or is this the kind of focused stuff that gets people credit?

What does it say about me, about this industry, that I am questioning the difference between these two?

I'm putting off passing this in to my boss. I'm smart enough to at least suggest that I be allowed to count this proposal towards my quarterly objectives for Q3....

Why do I still read PvP?

First off, let me just say that if there's one thing that I find less amusing than a drawn-out PvP story arc, it's one done by a guest artist. I'm not sure why I check there anymore, except for force of habit. Just for kicks I went back through the last month's archives to find the last time I got a real chuckle out of it.

I mean, masturbating blaspheming cats is worth something, right? That's the only one. And I'm stretching here.

(Yes, this is a poor excuse for a post. I'm sorry, it's Monday morning.)

MLP: Environment

I meant to link these but forgot about it in my rush to post about my geeky adrenalin rush. Yesterday I read some interesting articles and discussions about "Peak Oil." Links:

K5 Story (Part 1)
Wikipedia (linked from K5)
Economist POV

I find the entire subject pretty fascinating from an academic standpoint. It's an interesting time we live in.

On a related note, I recently watched Penn & Teller's Bullshit! as they talked about the environmental movement (the episode was from season 1). They weren't arguing that environmentalism is bullshit, but more that the movement was being hijacked by political activists who were using the mental capital of environmental concern to support a whole variety of anti-corporate, anti-globalism causes. They also talked about how much of the movement uses sensationalism instead of science, and so forth. Nothing really new but still useful to see. The moral of the story was to do your research before you give your money, and spend your energy in the rigth places for the right causes. Solid advice.

Geek Out, Geek Star.

Now is the humid summer of my discontent made glorious season-neutral-indoors by all the cool nerdy shit coming my way this weekend.

• Stargate SG-1
• Stargate Atlantis
• Battlestar Galactica
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

On a side note, I am so glad Potter came out after I was "grown up" because as a teenager I probably would have been too full of myself to get so much enjoyment out of a "kids' book." Unlike, say, The Pope, who is obviously still too full of himself to enjoy them. I should invite Darth Benedict over to my place for the weekend. Let him see what a corrupt soul really does with its spare time.

Blogs increasing information scatter?

The other day I noticed something about the "blogosphere." It all started when I tried to search my blog, just as you'd search your gmail, for something I knew I had written. The search box at the top didn't show anything -- obviously at this point Google isn't indexing my blog. That's fine -- I've never submitted it to be indexed, and very rarely if ever linked to it from a place where google indexes.

But it made me think about something else. Obviously people who blog enjoy being read, or they'd just keep a diary, right? And part of the appeal of a blog is supposed to be its interactivity. I write here about the new Harry Potter book, and you post a followup telling me I'm a geek, and then some SA goon posts a slash image of Harry and Hagrid, and the collective concsiousness grows, or something. Anyway, I stumbled onto something the other day which relates to all this.

I've lost the links, but it's a trend you've probably seen if you read blogs at all -- Author A posts something, and Author B writes a reply ... in his own blog. Then he just replies in Author A's blog: "I replied -here-" with a link back to his own blog (probably in an effort to drive readers or search engines to his blog). The conversation probably ends here, but maybe not ... maybe people reply to one or the other, and maybe some of them use this self-promoting "I replied here" mechanism. You end up with this fragmented mess.

I wonder if this is common. I'm new to this whole blogging thing, as you can probably tell. But it seems like something which isn't rare, and isn't necessarily healthy....

Firefox, Shuttles, and Childish Fascination

Just some random notes to fill space on a Wednesday morning:

Firefox 1.0.5 is out.

Of course, my browser hasn't figured this out yet, even though the download's been available all night. Mozilla delays auto-notification so the technocratic elite can get the patches first, evidently. I kid (sort of). It's an interesting topic, actually, which has been debated to death by people with far more energy than I have.

The space shuttle Discovery is set to launch this afternoon after repairs had to be done on the pad. Interesting to note that CNN calls it "emergency repairs" and Space.Com calls it "minor repairs." I guess they're both right. Enjoy your spin. I've set my desktop wallpaper to the beautiful glory shot of Columbia preparing for its first launch (STS-1), which I snagged off of APOD a while back.

Finally, on a more personal note, while eating lunch yesterday I watched a pair of street sweepers operate on Route 20 in Northboro. I got to watch them operate, empty the accumulated debris into a dump truck, which in turn covered the dirt with a sheet and turned around to drop it off somewhere. I felt like a little kid watching construction equipment at work; I had never really thought about the process of street sweeping. I thought I'd find more info on the process on HowStuffWorks, but no dice. Instead, I found this page, which talks about street sweeping from a municipal standpoint: how it improves your city to do it. This is why I love the Internet :).

Eager Feet keep moving

Well, these eager feet got back on the pavement yesterday, in the humid upper-80s sun. Let me tell you, after about a month off from running, this was an interesting way to remind my body what it "enjoys." The pain was relatively short-lived, afterwards, however.

In any case, "they" say that you generally will be sub-par for twice the period of your layoff so assuming I actually try and work this back into my schedule, I can expect it to take a couple months before I feel like my old self again. Well, my old "new" self.

In other eager feet news, these eager feet are headed for Las Vegas next month. A bunch of Amazon Basiners (not to be confused with, say, people killing monkeys with blowdarts in Brazil) are meeting up in Vegas for ABCon V. I was so focused on San Francisco that I haven't really started to get psyched up for Vegas yet. So, to remedy that, I'll try and focus my mental energies over the next few days on the sounds of slot machines, the sight of omnipresent neon, the taste of cheap booze, and the smell of cigarette smoke. Vegas, baby, Vegas!

Seriously, though, people are starting to get nutso about it on our forums, so that's cool. How will we meet, what will we do during off times, who wants to gamble vs. who wants to play Gamecube, who wants to hike, who wants to drink, etc. My wife has informed me that as long as I'm not leading a bunch of "internet nerds" over to the Bunny Ranch for a party I'm okay to go without her. Fine, be that way ;).

San Francisco Part 4 (w/Pics) (Last one!)

(See previous posts: 1, 2, 3).

SATURDAY

Last day in the city, and we were busy again. We slept in a little and then hoofed it over to Chinatown as they opened the place up. Jess and I both compared it to Cancun -- you're seeing the edges of a real "other" culture, but you're seeing it through this lens of tourist-friendliness. We walked into total tourist trap stores with tons of junk (neat, cool junk, but still junk), and we walked down alleys where various businesses with no english names operated. We saw a funeral procession go by, and we gawked at the vendors and their weird foods. We hit the district too early to catch the locals buying and selling things like live animals and such, but it was still plenty interesting.


We went to the Golden Dragon for Dim Sum, based on location and description in the San Francisco Chronicle. It was suitably Chinese -- not much English in their interactions, kind of confusing, but fun. Dim Sum deserves its own whole story -- the end of the story is that we ate until we were full for 15 dollars, including tip. Total. Amazing. The sad part of the story is that we left so many foods unsampled. Going with 4 is definitely the way to go -- either that or just leaving half the food uneaten. In any case, it wasn't long until we were passing on every dish they brought out, just because we were full.

We had a good laugh about Dim Sum, later. There were several Chinese families there, and a European family, who were obviously quite accomplished Dim Sum eaters :). We were a bit out of water, doing our best to get by. But there was a family there who made us look like we came from Hong Kong. The waittress comes by with the cart of food and says, "Dim Sum?". The guy responds by taking out this piece of paper, which turned out to be a flier from the restaurant promising "One free Dim Sum with Lunch Special." He points at the words "Dim Sum" and speaks with exaggerated volume: "DIM SUM?" It was hilarious. They ate their lunch special with their free plate of Dim Sum, though, and were evidently quite happy.


We know this because when the couple who looked like they were from Texas arrived, they sat down and the husband asked the guy at that table, "What's this Dim Sum stuff?" The guy answered, pointing at the small plate of Shumai he had, "It's these little dumpling thingies. We had some, they're good." Wow. So, yeah, evidently I'm like all cultured. Go me. As I mentioned to Jess later, though, it clearly takes a certain kind of courage to walk into a Dim Sum parlor having no idea what you're getting. I'm sure they were very proud of their adventurous spirit.

We ditched Chinatown and took the subway to Golden Gate Park, next. We spent the afternoon walking through the park, which is really beautiful. We had tea at the Japanese Tea Garden, ate Japanese cookies and snacks (including some Pocky ... honestly I don't understand its odd appeal to the anime fanboy set), and took some pictures of the pretty flowers and whatnot. Very relaxing, and a beautiful afternoon for it.


Then we got back on the subway and rode to Ocean Beach, where we stepped foot in the frozen Pacific. We strolled back to a corner bar right by the beach which turned out to be this cool neighborhood cafe with an awesome vibe. We relaxed, I had a beer, Jess had a soda, and we just took in the place. Very cool, and it was nice to be reminded that people -lived- here. It had a very college town feel to it, which was perfect.


On the way back, we got off the subway near the park and stopped at this Japanese place we had walked past before called Hotei, and ate noodle soup that was way too big for us. Still, delicious and again a perfect atmosphere, sitting in a window booth watching everybody walk by as the sun dipped down. The relaxing walk and subway ride back to the hotel really put the cap on our time in the city.

San Francisco Part 3 W/Pics

(See parts one and two)

FRIDAY


The conference was done, and this was our guided tour day. We started the morning with breakfast at a nearby cafe, followed by a bus ride to Muir Woods where Jess and I were consistenly overwhelmed by the beauty of nature. These trees are amazing -- the entire atmosphere is great. Super tall trees reaching up into the fog, etc. It's awe-inspiring. One thing that I didn't remember from my previous visit was the rich healthy smell of the place. One thing I could have done without was the crowd of people ... but what can you do? It's not your planet, it's everyone's. Heh. It was humbling and beautiful, and the 75 minutes we spent there was not quite enough time. Still, compromises must be made.



Our tour returned to San Fran via Sausalito, where we had lunch at a famous hamburger place whose name escapes me. I don't even think the sign for the place had a name, it just said "Hamburgers." Excellent food, eaten outdoors by the Sausalito marina. Jess fed pigeons, I took pictures of boats, and we hopped back in the van for the ride back to the city.


That was back across the bridge to Pier 41 (and 39), where we poked around a bit (Jess bought some cool earrings) before catching the ferry to Alcatraz. Alcatraz itself was also cool, especially with the audio tour. The audio tour is narrated by actual convicts and correctional officiers from the prison, and has various subtle non-cheesy sound-effects scattered throughout. I can see why it's won awards. The island was also covered in cool plants and birds, including a healthy amount of baby sea gulls. On the other hand, it was cold and windy, and we were ready to leave soon after the audio tour concluded. We took the boat back and tried to decide how to conclude our day. We were tired, we had walked around quite a bit, and we weren't sure how much fuel we had left. I certainly wasn't up for going back to the hotel, dressing up, and hitting anywhere fancy.


We decided to just walk until something caught our eyes, and after poking at a couple little stores we ended up at (you're going to laugh) Hooters. I have never been in a Hooters, so it was fun in that way. I was amused by how many couples and families there were there; only a couple tables had all-guy groups. Anyway, pretty girls, hair metal on the radio, cold beer, decent chicken, basically fuel up and head on out.

We waited in a HUGE line for the cable car home, suffering through a very poor performance by a street entertainer. The real joke here is that the people behind us seemed to think they were in a comedy club, constantly critiquing the performer's "act." "Is this his whole schtick?" Yes, dude, that's his whole schtick. You didn't pay a cover charge, you aren't in a nightclub, and be happy he doesn't turn outright hostile when you don't put money in his hat, ok?

EMC JavaOne Pic

Think of this as "Part 2.5" -- a picture of the EMC crew.


I'll get the rest of the report up this weekend.

San Francisco Trip - Part 2 (w/Pics)

(See part one)

MONDAY

I was at the conference all morning and all afternoon, and had lunch with Jess at the Metreon food court in between. I won't bore you with conference-related stuff, but the opening day was special. The first general session, where they welcomed us all, was very cool in a "relax and geek out" kind of way.

Side note: It was very difficult to balance the two vibes this trip had for me. On the one hand, you spend all day with 15,000 other geeks doing geeky stuff. During off time, there is tons of geeky amusement to be had, which I almost completely skipped to maximize my time with Jess and in the city. It led to some minor feelings of time and energy conflict which took some getting used to.



Moving on: the conference went to 7:00 PM and by then I was pretty wiped out. I didn't feel like doing anything ambitious, so we went for a walk to a nearby Indian cafe that gets rave reviews: Chaat Cafe. The reviews were right: awesome affordable Indian food. Very fun, very relaxing, and my only complaint was that the service was awful. The story here is that they are very busy at lunch, where you give your order at the counter, fight for a table, and scarf down your food with no real service. At dinner they seat you and take your order, but they really don't "serve" you that much after your food arrives. Not much in terms of drink refills, and it took forever to get our check.

TUESDAY

Probably my best day at the conference; lots of interesting sessions, with a convenient one hour break where nothing interested me too much. I grabbed lunch at a noodle place in the Metreon food court and got primo seats at the first session after that. Interesting content, kind of hit my tech groove.


This was the day Jess braved the subway and went to the zoo, which is her own story to tell. Still, way to go Jess!



After the sessions we hopped on the subway and made our way to the financial district, where we had awesome Greek food at Kokkari's. We were a little underdressed; most of the people there were still in their "I work in a bank or ad agency" uniforms. But our waiter was awesome. He made us feel totally at home, answered all our questions without a hint of condescension, and basically made us feel like the only customers in the place. Awesome from top to bottom. On the way back we walked through a neighborhood where wild parrots hang out in the trees, and poked around through various parks and such before heading back to the hotel.

Side note: obviously underlying all these little stories is the current of "city" experiences. Street musicians, pan-handlers, homeless people, insane crowds, busy traffic, stopping in random cafes for soda/coffee/tea, etc. I don't bother to add that in but it was part of the whole experience for us and one which we don't get that often.


WEDNESDAY

A very busy conference day, with no real breaks at all. I created one, though, and spent a little time exploring the vendor booths on the floor, because otherwise I would have felt cheated.

Side story: I had an amusing encounter with a "booth babe." There were not many of them, and even these were not true "booth babes" but probably just "attractive sales/marketing people." Still, it was obvious what this girl's job was, and she did an okay job of it. Now, I was interested in hearing about the product, but really I could have just grabbed their flier and reviewed it later. But I got completely sucked in. I thought I was above this, but once she made eye contact and smiled her huge pretty smile, I was like a deer in headlights. Yes, tell me more! That's fascinating! No, I haven't heard of your product before. Ah....yes, I see how that would be useful. Anyway, the story has a happy ending: I snapped out of it was she tried to hand me off to an engineer for a more in-depth demo of the product. I made my escape and grazed the other booths for minor trinkets, handouts, and brief sales speeches.

All part of the fun.

I don't remember what, if anything, we did Wednesday after my sessions. But we had dinner at a place we had walked by a dozen times, Max's. Their tagline was something like "everything you ever wanted to eat," and it was always crowded. The food was well-executed middle-of-the-road fare, with a slightly quirky but very "safe" atmosphere. The drinks were not the best, though, and the portions were too big. I hesitate to count that as a negative but it's hard not to -- our soups could have been meals in their own right, and each of us left half our dinners uneaten. Still, they were decent dinners and it was a fun, laid back time. We were able to sit in a booth where our seats were kitty-corner from each other, with good views of the streets outside. So we could people-watch and chat about the day.

I think I was pretty beat at this point, but there was one more day of "work" left.

THURSDAY

The vibe of the conference changed on the last day; the vendor booths closed up, the late-night sessions stopped, and I said goodbye to the various EMC folks I had met from across the country.

Side note: I met lots of interesting people at the conference, just random people you'd start a conversation with in line. Where are you from, go anywhere interesting yesterday, etc. Nice times. I am not really an extroverted person but it's interesting to see the contrast between me and truly shy people. I got involved in a 3-way conversation where one guy was really outgoing but the other was totally quiet. It was odd watching him just get quieter and quieter as the other guy and I kind of took over the conversation. Random humanity :).

The general session on the last day was the "here's the future" session, and it was pretty cool and inspiring in its own way. I hit all the sessions I could on the last day, again with no real break, but skipped the last session of the day so I could be out by 3:30. We made plans to meet at the movies at 6 with Ura and another EMC guy
named Steve, and that was that.

After checking and seeing the movie didn't start until almost 7, Jess and I grabbed dinner before the movies. We ended up at a Mexican place that was actually part of a chain, called Chevy's. Still, huge high quality ritas, fresh tortilla chips, spicy delicious food, and Mexican music added up to a great time. We hit War of the Worlds after that, and then wandered around the city with Ura and Steve, ending up back at our hotel bar for a couple drinks and some vague work-related discussion. A solid evening.

San Francisco Trip - Part 1 (w/PICS)

Having recently returned home from 8 days in San Francisco for the JavaOne conference, I thought I'd inflict upon my faithful readers (ha) a little summary of my trip. We start with the first weekend in the city and I'll follow up with later days. Background info: this was my second time in SF and my wife's first. I know this will read backwards but such is the life of the blogger.

SATURDAY

We got a ride to the airport in a "shared van" which cost us like 60 bucks each way. Considering the cost of parking for 8 days plus the convenience factor, it seemed worth it. There's a good chance the company will pay for this expense, making it even more worth it. They picked us up at 3 AM, and the only reason I even mention this is that when we left a skunk was chilling out by our back porch (as in, it ran away from me when I came out by running between my grill and my steps). After this little adrenalin rush subsided, the trip there was pretty uneventful.

We got to SF, exhausted, and were checked into our hotel by noon their time. We headed out for our first brief excursion by walking around the immediate area until we found a place that looked about our speed for lunch. We ended up at a place called the Daily Grill, which was quiet, casual (enough), and good. We ate sandwiches and returned to the hotel to nap for a few hours because, you know, getting up at 2:30 AM is tiring.

Late afternoon, we headed out for a little laid-back exploration. We walked to where my conference was held, and I picked up my registration materials. Along the way we got a little lost (Moscone West != Moscone, fyi), but it was no big deal. We poked around downtown a little, bought a weeklong public transit pass (great deal at 20 bucks per person), and settled in to dinner at some jazz bistro that was completely empty. The food was completely average -- I imagine the real appeal was the music, but we were too early for music. Remember, we were 3 hours off schedule and operating on weird sleep too.

Side story: a street musician, later in the week, responded to my friend Ura's question of where to go for some cool music by naming this same jazz bistro.

SUNDAY

This was our real welcome to the city day. We started with breakfast at Sears Fine Foods, a short walk away and evidently a famous breakfast joint. Good food, but I'm not sure I understand how it got so famous. Maybe staying in business for decades and decades has something to do with it.

After breakfast, we headed downtown and walked pretty far down Market St (heading west). This was the Pride Parade day, and the street was blocked off and tons of cops were hanging around to set up. As such, we walked with confidence through some fairly sketchy areas :). We turned around as we got near the civic center, and walked all the way back to like 5th St or so, where we found a gap in the crowd and saddled up to the barriers to watch the parade.

The parade was MASSIVE. It opened with the 600-strong "Dykes on Bikes" and went from there. Jess was moved to tears at the start of it, which I wasn't expecting. She said it was sad to see these people who were so obviously happy with their lives and yet had to fight for the simplest recognition and respect. That gave me a little pause and cast the event in a slightly different light for me.



In any case, it was a freakshow. We saw a couple topless women and a couple bottomless guys, float after float representing various groups, companies, and causes, and just tons of people marching. Overall, though, it was much more tame than we were expecting. I guess growing up in Northampton, living in liberal Massachusetts, and traveling as much as we have, we've already seen a lot. Maybe the Internet has something to do with it too. But it wasn't the "OMG insane" freakshow we sort of were hoping for. It's like we secretly wanted to have our boundaries tested and pushed, and instead we just stood by and watched stuff we've seen before, and applauded with everyone else.




Side note: it was deeply moving to see the very strong anti-establishment crowd applaud as one when the (very few) gay veterans marched by, again when the gay police marched by (with partners), and finally again when the mayor marched by. You see so much stupid "I hate everybody" rebellion that it's nice to see properly directed "I can hate the war but still applaud the vets" energy.




Anyway, it was quite an experience. The crowds were huge, and friendly. We saw NO anti-parade protesters, which was another surprise. Plenty of anti-war, anti-Bush signs, of course. Heh. Eventually we grew tired of watching people march by, and it was clear the "big bang" stuff had already gone by, so we moved on. We walked east and ended up at the Ferry Building, Pier 1, Embarcadero. We had lunch at The Slanted Door, Vietnamese food, and just generally enjoyed the atmosphere of the building. Lots of little shops, small farmers' market, lots of people milling about, great views of the Bay Bridge (to Oakland), etc. Then we waited for the restored vintage subway car to take us to Pier 39.



At Pier 39 we just kind of walked around, went into a few shops, checked out the view, the seal lions, etc. We were really kind of wiped out, though, to get much out of this. We took the cable car back to our hotel and rested up a bit, meeting one of my Amazon Basin friends for dinner. It was supposed to be two friends but one never showed. In any case, she took us to the Cliff House, where we waited for an hour to get a table and chatted while admiring the killer views of the Pacific. If you haven't been up there, make a point of it next time you're in SF. It's downright surreal to see the ocean from that angle, and the sunset wasn't half-bad either.



So that was our first big city day; exhausting, long, but awesome.

Feeling Rejuvenated

My plane landed a couple hours ago, and I'm back home, safe, sound, and not quite tired enough to sleep. Three cheers for time zone changes!

I figured instead of wasting away my energy playing a video game, I'd pop in here and write up a short comment on how this trip has made me feel. The best word I can use is rejuvenated.

My wife and I this past week experienced things both wondrous and mundane, spectacular and tacky. We met new people, saw new places, and learned new things. We were pampered and humbled, awestruck and saddened. It was everything we travel for, and I couldn't ask for it to be more.

In addition, I spent four days with my industry peers and felt my excitement for my industry rekindled. I have no idea how long it will last, but I have realized how out of touch I have become with the state of the art, and how easy it would be to invest just a little more time into staying more in touch. I'm looking forward to sharing with my co-workers everything that I took away from the convention. Someone slap me, I'm losing touch with reality.

I'm thrilled to be home. But part of me is sad knowing that the energy I feel right now will fade over time. Maybe I can find a way to preserve and channel it. Only time will tell.

Connectivity in San Fran

My time in San Francisco is almost at an end. There's so much I could write about, but right now I'm thinking about connectivity.

My hotel room has an ethernet port, through which I am currently connected. To use it, I must activate a service for a period of up to 24 hours (actually it's from "now" until 3 PM the next day), at a cost of ten dollars. Compared to my home broadband fee, this is highway robbery. Compared to being offline, it's a bargain.

Like many of us, I have begun to take it for granted that "cyberspace" is an always-reachable extension of my own mind. I don't need it 24 hours a day, but day after day it really starts to add up. What was that movie, what was that trivial fact, what was that restaurant I read about, how far is it from point A to point B, and what's the buzz on that microbrewery/tapas joint by the Moscone center? I am so used to being able to answer questions like this within seconds, that being unable to answer them even after a whole day has gone by is painful.

Not to mention that I find myself completely unable to absorb news from my surroundings without it. I see something in a headline, see a piece of a news report, and my first thought isn't "turn on CNN" it's "I wonder if there's a thread about this on Ars or Slashdot." I need to know not just what is happening, but what "my peers" think about it.

Don't get me wrong. I am not sitting there consumed by my lack of connectivity while taking a slow walk through Muir Woods. And as I enjoy a great Greek beer and dip my grilled pita bread in an eggplant and garlic spread I am not thinking "I wonder what today's Penny Arcade was." There's a place for being disconnected, and certain states of mind which only seem to be reachable when you're out of touch. Not only that, but I recognize and value the experience of sitting down for a meal at a restaurant you've heard nothing about and being blown away by the surprise -- of reading a book nobody told you was going to be good and thrilling at making a secret discovery.

But the fact is, those times, places, and experiences are few and far between. I need my cybernetic brain add-on more than I need to be without it.

And apparently I am not the only one. Today I saw a street musician with his hotmail email address written down on a piece of paper in his guitar case, among the nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollar bills. It was surreal, but at the same time I kind of identified with him.

Aching for more time in San Francisco

So I'm in San Francisco for the 10th JavaOne conference, and every day is full of exciting stuff I want to write about -- but time in front of a PC is not a common commodity. There's a big part of me that wants to write a blog entry for each day, detailing everything I'm seeing and doing, but I just don't have the time.

We'll see. Maybe I'll get some free time today and will be able to write something at least....

Burning Political Issues

The US House of Representatives has approved a constitutional ammendment making it legal for Congress to create a law banning the desecration of our flag. It now has to be approved by the Senate and states.

Some links:
Yahho News
Wikipedia
Flag Burning FAQ

This has happened in the past, but each time the Senate has overturned it. Many observers expect this time around to be different. For example, 49 of the 50 states (thank you, Vermont, and fuck you, New Hampshire - live free indeed) have expressed non-binding support for this amendment.

Regardless of how you feel about burning the flag in protest, let's look at some facts:

• The Constitution has been in effect since 1789
• It has been amended only 18 times in those years (the first ten amendments arrived all at once)
• In the past century, only 12 amendments have passed. These include our system of taxation, women's rights, and various voting and representative technicalities.
• Two of those amendments "cancel each other out" -- Prohibition and its removal.
• The flag is already hevaily protected: you cannot even use in it advertising (someone tell car dealers this, please).
• Congress estimates 7 flags are burned in protest each year.
• Our elected representatives do not have the power to tell us what to hold sacred.
• Most flags that are burned are burned in protest of flag-burning laws.
• A theoretical law protecting the flag will be impossible to enforce equitably.
• Our "old" laws against flag-burning were terribly written and we cannot assume new ones will be better.

In summary, our elected representatives feel it is worth modifying the founding document of our nation in order to make illegal something which happens, according to their own estimates, seven times a year. They further willingly walk into the minefield of legislation of religion, as they take on the task of defining the sacred and punishing those who disagree (see: Jehovah's Witnesses, who refuse to hold the flag sacred due to strict interpretations of Biblical prohibition of "idolatry").

I'll wrap this up by stating that I feel this is the single most frightening step this administration has taken against our freedoms, and that's saying a lot (USA PATRIOT act, anybody?). If we do this, we create a nation where it is now actually possible to commit a thought crime.

Let me put it this way. Our Contitution is more sacred than our flag, and our nation as a whole will desecrate it by passing this amendment. That desecration is not worth the benefit of giving our cops another way to harass the dirty hippies whose flag-burning protests don't convince anybody of anything anyway.

I'm ashamed of every single vote in favor of this amendment.

Morbid family

Why are our families so morbid and uninformed?

So, evidently there have been a few earthquakes in California recently. And it's got my family rattled, pun intended. See, my wife and I are headed there soon, and after having never mentioned it in the past both our parents recently asked us if we had wills set up.

After all, they both said, you don't want your stuff to go "to the state."

First off, yeah, thanks for the vote of confidence. I fully expect to come home safe and sound from this trip.

Second off, what "stuff" do we have? Barring items of sentimental value, we're talking about a very small savings account, a life insurance policy, a car which is mostly still owned by the bank, a couple pieces of jewelry which are more sentimentally important than financially, and some substandard consumer electronics. We're not talking about real estate, substantial savings, or a hidden sack of precious gems.

Third, "the state?" Come on.

But, you know, just to be safe I did a little research. My life insurance policy goes to a list of beneficiaries in the order I specified when I signed up. I don't even remember what I did, but I'm sure I made the right choice and didn't somehow accidentally list "the state" as one of the recipients of my death loot. Even if the only recipient was my wife, according to the plan if all my beneficiaries are dead when I die, the benefits are paid out to a surviving family member in order of spouse, child, parent, etc. So, no worries there.

But what about all my stuff? Who gets my substandard consumer electronics?

Evidently, the body of law dealing with what happens if you die and leave no will behind is called Intestacy Law. According to the wikipedia,

In most contemporary common-law jurisdictions, the law of intestacy is patterned after the common law of descent. Property goes first to a spouse, then to children and their descendants; if there are no descendants, the rule sends you back up the family tree to the parents, the siblings, the siblings' descendants, the grandparents, the parents' siblings, and the parents' siblings' descendants, and sometimes further to the more remote degrees of kinship.

So, again, if we both die in a terrible accident, our "stuff" goes to our families. Only if it becomes impossible to identify such an individual does the mysterious "state" get my mad loot. I guess there's some concern that the person dividing up the loot belongs to the impersonal "state" but, really, is that enough to lose sleep over? Some further research into Massachusetts law brings up a lot of arguments in favor of a will, but most of them revolve around making sure your "assets" go to the "right people" in your family or in expediting the process (counting on the courts to divide your assets can take over a year).

So, yeah. I know I "should" have a will, so I can determine that Clint gets my D&D books and my mom gets my cat and Jess's cousins get her jewelry, or something. But, really, at this point? Give me a break.

On second thought, maybe I should make up a will. I'll leave everything to charity.

I Built God's House

Ok, not really. But I did lend a hand in turning what used to be a golf store into a church this weekend.

Now, obviously, I am not a church guy. I am not what you'd call a god guy. But I'm surrounded by family who are god people, church people, even "pray for your broken appliance" people. This weekend, as part of a Father's Day "present" from my wife to her Dad, I contribued a ton of untrained manual labor to some family work. Some of that was basically demolition work on a house, and some of it was helping put their storefront church together in time for yesterday's services.

We moved a few dozen chairs from one place to another. We built a podium and carpeted it. We took down blinds and hung them up, curtains, decorations, A/V equipment, signs, even an American flag. We cleaned, we climbed ladders, we carried all manner of heavy objects around, and in the end it looked almost respectable.

And there's a small part of me that felt strangely satisfied yesterday knowing that somewhere, a few people were praying, singing, and listening to a sermon in a building that was once a golf store and was now "God's house" as far as they were concerned.

Of course, the sign on the street still says "Al's Caddy Shack." And I'm still an atheist stuck in an extended family of fundamentalists. And I try not to think about the fact that the people who get sucked into that church are being handed a belief system which cripples them and sends them back into the Dark Ages.

Because I say take your satisfaction where you can get it, people, and don't overanalyze it :).

Rampant Consumerism - Food Edition

Who needs movie reviews when you can read FOOD REVIEWS?

I've tried 2 new food products this week:

Nabisco Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits
It's kind of a weird dark secret of mine that I can't get enough rosemary. It's like I discovered this herb about 2 years ago and am catching up on a lifetime of not using it. I try to sneak it into foods we cook when my wife's not watching, and every time I manage to enjoy some restaurant food with it as an ingredient I'm happy like a little kid who found "Chocolate Bread" on the menu.

That said, the taste on these was a little overdone. It tasted (sort of) like rosemary (kind of like bacon bits taste sort of like bacon), but it was a little greasy and heavy for what I wanted. I think they could have gotten away with a lighter taste and still teased the edges of my rosemary craving.

Don't get me wrong; we still ate them. But they aren't the next big thing....

Side note: how did Thomas Cutter end up with the triscuits.com domain?

Coca-Cola Zero
Yes, another diet coke variant. This one is made with asparteme and Ace-K, a relatively new sweetener which has been in use in Europe for a few years but has only recently showed up in the US. You may have seen Ace-K previously as a "filler" sweetener when products who intended to use just Splenda ran into a shortage. In any case, Coke Zero tastes a hell of a lot like regular coke. That same somewhat-heavy taste you get when you drink sugar soda is there -- but there's no sugar. It's a very odd sensation.

In any case, I've been drinking plain-old-diet coke for so long that I associate that sugary flavor with "bad" instead of "good." So, I'm not sure if this new potential flavor will win me over or not. It might work well in a rum&coke drink, where the heavier sugar-like flavor is more desirable....

Monday Grab Bag

I had hoped to update this blog twice a week. Instead, it's being updated every two weeks.

Bi-weekly vs. semi-weekly.

I guess I could just say I intended to publish bi-weekly and let the confusion over the term rule the roost. Reference this quote:

Be aware that these terms have come to mean either twice a year, month, or week, or every other year, month, week. To avoid confusion, use either twice a or every other, according to need.

Why can't I use both? "Twice an every other week." Yeah, figure that out. You'll be so busy you won't notice I'm not updating.

I was going to sit down and write some kind of thoughtful entry, but instead I'll just dump some random thoughts down for perpetual safekeeping on the internets.

• Probably four times in my life I have bought non-dairy flavored creamer, expecting it to make my coffee taste like mildly sweet flavored coffee with creamer in it. Instead, it consistently makes it taste like someone dumped a ton of sugar and some heavy cream into my coffee, and it's a struggle to get it down. And yet, I keep trying, every couple years. It just sounds so good.
• I watched Along Came Polly yesterday. It's nothing. Hank Azaria's small role as a nudist SCUBA instructor is damn funny, though. The guy's a chameleon. He can play anything.
• I ate "healthily" six days out of the last seven. It was a welcome change and reminds me how good it feels to eat right. And how good it can feel to skip off for a day, binge on margaritas and tortilla chips, and come crawling back.
• On a related note, I had no idea we hadn't started cultivating blueberries seriously until the early 20th century. Hot damn, I love blueberries. Peak season for blueberries starts now and lasts until mid-August. Indulge today!

  A one-cup serving of fresh blueberries will give you 5 grams of fiber, more than most fruits and vegetables and 15% of your daily value for vitamin C at a cost of only 80 calories.

And that's what I got....

Weekend Trip Report

We spent the weekend at Hollister Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast, in Vermont.

Our weekend was the uber-relaxer. The drive to the place we stayed was a bit over 4 hours, and we didn't rush it either. Once you clear Lowell things get nicer, and once you get onto Rte 89 it's just beautiful driving. I was already feeling pretty good by the time we got up there.

I won't bore you with a play by play, but it was a nice change of pace. The innkeepers are folks who gave up their day jobs back in the 70s and moved up to Vt to try and raise their families and be self-sufficient, live off the land. Now they run what they call a "diversified farm," a farm where they know they can't live off what the farm provides, so they add to the income in little ways. The B&B is one of those, selling honey and maple syrup is another, selling their own meat is another, breeding golden retriever puppies, etc. They get by, but they live very simply.

It's interesting to meet people like that, with strong convictions, who have really put their money where their mouths are, so to speak. To stay with them for the weekend was a peek into a totally different way of life.

The location they have for themselves is amazing, by the way. I mean, you stand with your back to their house or barn and just rotate in a semicircle and see nothing but hills, fields, and trees. No planes flying over, no sounds of nearby highways, nothing. At one point we realized we could hear the cows chewing grass. Pretty wild.

We didn't do a lot; our main recreation was driving into Montpelier for some light shopping and exploring. Montpelier is the capital of Vt, but it feels more like a small town than a capital of anything. I think it's got, what, 8K people in it? No McDonalds, no Starbucks, etc. Lots of interesting people, very diverse in a Vermonty way (meaning, all kinds of white folks - heh).

We capped off the weekend with a long drive home, taking mainly 2-lane highways and avoiding most of the holiday weekend traffic. We got held up in one small town when their Memorial Day parade went through, so that was a little piece of Americana :).

In the end, we did a lot of nothing in a very quiet place, but met some characters which have enriched my internal "cast list" and gave us some pause in terms of looking at where our society is going and what people are doing who feel strongly about changing it, at least for themselves and their communities.

Two thumbs up.

Cat Humor

Data point 1:
For graduation, my grandmother sent Jess a wonderful hand-knit/crocheted/something blanket. Very nice. It's on our bed now.

Data point 2:
Last night, shortly after midnight, we were awakened by a loud crashing noise followed by the cat tearing ass out of our room. I got up, looked around, saw nothing unusual. I walked to the top of the stairs, and saw Smokey at the bottom, looking up. Without my glasses on, I couldn't make out the details, but it looked like he might have had something in his mouth. Squinted, shrugged, went back to bed.

This morning, I woke up, went to work, etc. I had forgotten data point 2.

I get a call from Jess as I'm walking out of an early-morning meeting with my boss. "Yeah, the cat threw up last night, on the blanket your grandmother gave me." Oh, boo-hoo. "There was blood in it." Oh, crap, our cat is sick. He's vomiting blood. This is bad, right?

Ah. See, no. It wasn't his blood. Jess, in the process of cleaning up the vomit, solved the mystery -- evidently our cat not only caught, but ate, an entire small mouse last night. And then proceeded to barf up the resulting chewed up corpse.

So, yeah, go Smokey. Poor Jess. "I mean, there was a foot, a tail, pieces of a head, intestines, ... " Oh, damn. So glad I somehow managed to wake up, get ready for work, and go to work, without seeing that.

We've been very pest-free in this apartment, but we have seen evidence of mice in our attic before. We have seen exactly one mouse outside the attic, in our bedroom, and smokey chased it back under the door that leads to the attic. This one clearly will not be returning to wherever he came from.

Lazy Feet?

These eager feet of mine have been a bit lazy in the past couple weeks. Things have been so busy with "real life" that I haven't had much energy to focus on maintaining fitness. As such, my exercise has dropped way down.

Watch this space: I'm sure I'll write more about how I'm struggling to stay regular with fitness. How exciting for you, eh?

Another aspect of having eager feet, though, is my constant desire to be traveling. We indulged this last Friday when we took an impromptu day trip up to Maine and enjoyed hanging about our haunts in Ogunquit for an afternoon. I'd post a picture but it was so impromptu I didn't even bring a camera :).

Memo to U-Haul: Join the 90s, plz, kthxbai

So, I dunno, 10 days ago I reserved a UHaul truck using their website for Sunday. I had to provide credit card info during the process on a page called "payment" and so I assumed I was, you know, paying for the truck.

Well, no.

I called today to double check, and, no, you can't prepay. It's impossible. Not online, not over the phone. Gotta pay in person.

So I had to scramble to Western-Union the money to my uncle down there, because they can't front the cash.

So, yeah, how hard is it to manage this process? Oh well, at least we didn't have to do it on Sunday when he was picking up the truck....

Book Review: Guns, Germs, and Steel

First, the book: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Binary review: thumbs up!

Every time I sat down with this book, I learned something that made me grin somewhere in my head.

The idea behind this book is pretty simple: try to explain how throughout history various cultures have advanced at different rates and in different ways than other cultures, how they conquered or squeezed out those other cultures, and how that led us to where we are today. It does so using all the branches of historical science and does an excellent job tying it all together.

I think I feel in love with this book when I read a line about how the difference between two primitive grain crops could explain much of the way our world was today. Manifest destiny my ass -- we're just lucky.

To point out some flaws, I guess I would say that the book has trouble finding an audience it really wants to talk to. As a serious scholar, I would need to dive into more detail. You could probably write a book based on each chapter in his book. But as a casual observer, I could probably have used less detail. The book could have been half its length and I would still have believed him :).

That doesn't mean the book is too long. Nor is it too detailed. It's just a very hard market to nail. I, personally, didn't need as much information as he gave. But I'm glad it's there, because it reassures me that he isn't some quack just out to make a buck.

The other flaw with the book is that I sometimes feel, reading it, as if he's preaching to the choir. He isn't just documenting history here, he's trying to change the minds of people who feel that somehow the fact that western civ has conquered the world shows some kind of "specialness" on the part of our culture (or worse, our people). What he doesn't realize (or chooses to ignore) is that the people he's railing against are the people who will turn around and say that "God"
granted XYZ culture dominance over the others and that his scientific mumbo jumbo is just the mechanism for that. In other words, it's enlightening and educating, but I don't think he's "converting" any closed-minded racists or xenophobes with his work. Meh, I don't know.

I should also be fair and point out the fact that the author comes across as a bit biased, both towards his own theories and perhaps against western civ at large. Hard to explain, but you'll see what I mean if you read it. Something of an overcompensation, perhaps?

Anyway. I only point these flaws out because I feel the need to be complete. I would recommend this book without reservation to anyone with a critical mind.

I should post more often, I know.

Tuesday is weigh-in day, right? Up a pound, unfortunately.

If I'm good I'll write a book review later....

Progress Report

One week into my "new beginnings" in mid-April and I've somehow managed to lose a couple pounds despite all the sabotage.

Apr 12: 190.5
Apr 19: 188

The exercise is steadily increasing and the diet is improving but still up and down.

In other news, it's going to hit 85 today. It was 70 when I got to work. I'm wearing shorts. Hope nobody complains!

New Beginnings in Mid-April?

Got on the scale this morning and saw a number which I wasn't happy to see. I started this whole thing last July and weighed 231. I have been as low as 183 and told myself I wouldn't let myself top 190 again, even though I've hovered between 183 and 188.

Today I hit 190 again.

It just hammered the point home which someone so kindly pointed out to me last week -- you can always find a reason it's not a good time to focus on this stuff.

So I've decided to set some spring goals and work towards them.

My goal is to drop ten pounds by July 1. That will put me at a 50 pound loss in one year.

I will accomplish this goal by returning to Calorie counting (FitDay, here I come) and maintaining a healthy Calorie deficiency. I will increase my activity so that I am exercising 5-6 days a week, even if running is only 3-4 of those days. This is what I did last year, and what I've been lazy about since January.

I am posting this because by coming out and saying it, I'll push myself to actually do it.

11 weeks. A pound a week would beat my goal.

It starts today. I actually measured my cereal this morning, looked at the bowl and said, "Yep, portion control." Funny how you get comfortable and just assume you're still giving yourself one serving when in fact you're more than doubling it....

I'm heading to the gym for some elliptical and bike work, since I ran last night and need to "rest".

Toilet Humor

I sent this to a friend in email but realized it belonged here:

I don't usually bitch about people's bathroom habits, because while it's a limitless source of amusement, we've heard it all before. Don't talk to me while I'm in there, don't talk on the phone, blah blah blah.

So, yeah. This one was bizarre enough to send on. A guy humming "My Country 'tis of Thee" the entire time he's in the stall.

Weird enough, but now I have it stuck in my head, and every time I think of it I wonder, "Why is that stuck in my head" and the answer is "Oh yeah, that guy in the fucking bathroom." Thanks, humming in the john guy.

Music Review

I bought a few CDs last week, in response to a BMG music club "featured selection" I was interested in. Brief thoughts on the purchases:

Megadeth - The System Has Failed
This album could have been recorded a decade or more ago, and in this case this is a compliment. Megadeth has of late been somewhat fickle; I haven't bought their last few albums and the singles I've heard and/or downloaded have been ok but not great. This album is solid in the way their older stuff was. Maybe that's a step backwards for them, but as far as I'm concerned I'm happy to have one more album of heavy old school Megadeth thrash-like metal. Thumbs up for fans of the genre :).

Modest Mouse - Good News for Poeple Who Like Bad News or some such long title
Meh. I got this on a whim and it's, well, acceptable. I'm not going to write home about it, but I'm not going to rip it out of my rotation. I get the feeling if I was in the right mood I would enjoy it more but I'm not sure I'm ever in that mood. Neutral rating.

Ramones - Anthology Hey Ho Let's Go (2 disc "greatest hits")
How did I get this far in life and never buy a fucking Ramones album? I don't know. But I did, and this was a great set to rectify this with. Solid gems, many of which are already well known due to radio play, but I'm excited to finally "own" them. Plenty of songs I haven't heard a lot, or even at all, too. Awesome, thumbs up for anybody who claims to enjoy rock music in any of its stylings.

While I'm throwing out reviews, I'll mention an album I "rediscovered" the other day I sat down the other day and listened to David Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" and was very pleasantly surprised. Good stuff; I feel like a little piece of my musical background has filled itself in. Thumbs up but probably not for folks who don't already have a soft spot for 70s-epic rock songs.

Race images

Race Report: Holyoke 10K. My first!

The weather forecast was perfect for a run; 45 degrees and sunny.

We were on the road by 9, and by 10 had reached Holyoka MA, site of the 30th Annual Holyoke St. Patrick's Day Parade 10K Road Race.

Our first stop was to retrieve my T-shirt and timing chip. Already the place was alive with runners, gray haired fit-looking men, tall thin brunettes in ponytails, college-aged guys who clearly spent more time lifting than running ... and more. Everybody was represented.

We soon met up with Steve & Brenda and their 3 kids, and we strolled around the area. This is a huge event; last year over 2400 runners completed the race. It's the first day of a 2-day St. Patrick's event that culminates in a huge parade televised nationwide on armed forces television. In other words, the town was hopping. Runners, spectators, and support crew were everywhere. It felt really surreal to be walking around in full running gear and be smelling the hot grease smells you normally associate with fairgrounds. Sausage vendors, french fry carts, vendors of cheesy Irish toys; you name it, it was there.

And it was all green, of course.

First we watched the kids run their "fun run" race; a couple hundred feet through the actual finish line we'd all go through later. Then we milled about some more as the crowd grew thicker and more diverse; music playing from a half-dozen directions at once, Irish drinking songs being the order of the day. A crowd gathered in the outdoor area near a bar, enjoying a few lunchtime Guinesses and getting ready to cheer us on.

I was getting antsy. My stomach wasn't really settled; I hadn't eaten lunch, I felt off-kilter. I never run at 1:00; always either first thing in the morning or a couple hours after a light breakfast. It was a weird time for me. The kids were getting antsy too; they knew they had a long afternoon ahead of them, with a lot of waiting.

12:30. The call came out. "Runners to the starting line." We ambled over there, and hundreds of others followed. Over the next half hour more and more runners would crowd behind the starting line. Nervous snippets of conversation, folks catching up with each other, talking about the race, talking about running, talking about family. A group of high school girls formed in front of us, wearing shirts saying, "Kiss me if you catch me." Steve joked that he'd sprint ahead and trip them so I had a chance to test their pledge.

The sheer variety of runners was amazing. The sun beat down on a motley crew of single-minded individuals from a thousand backgrounds. 12-year old kids giggled nervously, grandfathers stretched calmly, and we shifted our weight from foot to foot and wished we had worn shorts.

When the starting gun fired, it took us all by surprise. No announcements, no buildup, just "bang!" As an event chopper buzzed the crowd the elite runners took off at an intimidating pace. A few hundred people back, we slowly shuffled our feet for a hundred yards until it opened up enough that we could begin an easy jog. We ran past Jess who was watching the kids, waved with stupid grins, and took off.

Right away, I knew the pace was too fast. We were pounding the pavement, keeping up with everyone around us without a problem. My breath was coming fast and heavy, but my legs were fine. "You'll be fine once your muscles loosen up," Steve assured me. I wasn't so sure. When we passed mile one, I knew I was right: it had only taken us 10 minutes. I had never maintained that pace for more than 3 miles before.

At the first water station, I grabbed an ice-cold plastic cup of water, gunned it, and tossed it aside like a true runner. I must admit, that felt pretty cool.

It felt even cooler to be part of this huge mass of runners, filling up a city street with poice barriers keeping traffic away. On the sides of the route, like spectators at a parade, random onlookers cheered us on, some calling names, others just shouting encouragement. I'll comment more on this later; it's a memory that will last forever.

Soon, the hills started. Or, I should say, hill. The middle 2.5-3 miles of the race is one long uphill. Sure, it has steeper and almost level sections, but it's a hill. And running the second mile in only 11:00 did nothing to make the hill easier. Add to this that I had never drank water mid-run before, and I felt like the whole glass of water was still sitting at the very base of my throat, ready to be puked up at any instant.

I was in real trouble, a fact which I tried to express to Steve without much success. I had developed a cramp in my side in the middle of the second mile, and after running with it for about a mile I knew it was going to really mess me up. That and the puke-feeling was too much. I slowed down. "I think I need to walk for a second." Steve refused. He grilled me. Where did it hurt, what was wrong? "Just change how you're running." I tried what he suggested, and it helped a little, but after less than a minute it was overwhelming. "I'm serious," I said, and dropped to a walk.

I hated to do it. I knew I could do this race without walking. I knew it. But this was too much to handle. I was walking; walking fast, but walking. And so early in the race. I was discouraged, but the pain immediately lessened. After only about ten seconds I got back into an easy jog pace. The cramp was loosening, and then it was gone. I sped up a little, but there was no way I was getting back into a 10:00 pace, not up that hill.

Even at 48 degrees, the sun was HOT as we climbed the hill. It was a real labor. I can't remember what time it was when we passed 3 miles, but I was seriously questioning my sanity and my decision to even take up running at that point. I knew I was halfway done but I was so much more than halfway drained. Still, the hill's end was close, or so I kept hearing. I just knew that if I had 3 more miles of that hill, I was going to die.

But they were right. By mile 4, things had changed. Gravity was working for us, not against us. Steve kept trying to get me to speed up, but even with the hill helping me I couldn't really get it going. Still, I was stunned by the time: 4 miles in around 45 minutes, give or take. At this point, I realized something: even at my slowest run, or even a brisk walk, I could finish this race in around 1:15, my earlier goal. This flipped a switch in my head, and the mental weariness began to melt off a little. Of course, the physical weariness was getting stronger. While the cramp and nausea had subsided, I had been running long enough where my body was starting to tire. My knees were sore, my feet were starting to ache, and the repeated shock of hitting the ground, especially down hill, was echoing in my head.

But we were on the home stretch. As we neared mile 5, more and more people crowded along the side of the course. Kids would stand on the curb with their hands out, for us to slap as we ran by. Random folks on their porches with beers in their hands would yell, "Looking good! You can do this! All downhill from here!" Every single time this happened I smiled; those people helped more than they know.

I did speed up. Of course, so did everyone else. Mile 5. 56 minutes. Brenda said that if we managed a 4 minute mile we'd just about break the 60 minute mark. I laughed, or tried to. It was getting hard to communicate. My head was starting to hurt; I felt like I could feel my pulse in my entire scalp.

The attitude among the other racers was great, though. Folks would yell back at the spectators; we all talked about what we were waiting for at the finish. Around mile 4, someone said, "come on, 2 more miles and you can have a beer." After agreeing this was a good idea, I said what I really wanted was to lie down. A woman near me said, "No, beer's good." I offered a compromise. How about lying down with a beer?

Between mile 5 and mile 6, we poured it on. They just kept speeding up. Steve and Brenda kept pointing out where we could pass someone, kept talking about how close we were. Finally, we could see the marker for mile 6. A couple runners next to me slowed way down; I overheard them say they wanted to sprint the final .2 and needed to rest up. I think if I had stopped like that I would never have started again.

We rounded the corner, and I literally shivered all over. It was awesome. We could see the finish, the huge marker over the road. The final .2 was all uphill, but we could see the end. And thousands of people lined the final part of the course, from already-finished runners to random revelers, they were all applauding. "We finish together," Steve said, and turned on the gas. I gave it all I had.

I have never pushed myself as hard as I did right then. Every step hurt, but every step took me past a dozen or more people applauding and hollering. I could feel every heartbeat in my temples. My body was rebelling, but I wasn't listening.

We passed the finish mark together with the clock overhead somewhere around 1:09:30. My wife stood right at the finish, cheering me on, and I didn't even see her. I couldn't think about anything but how good it was going to feel to stop. We crossed the line, and we slowed immediately to a walk. "Keep going, to the back of the chute," we were told, and we moved, slowly, achingly, gasping for air.

We grasped each others' hands, we half-hugged, we took off our timing chips and walked like wounded soldiers leaning on each other towards the water table, where we drank up and tried to catch our breath. My headache went away immediately, but the pain in my feet and knee just got worse. Exhaustion caught up with me; everything caught up with me.

It's been 6 hours since then.

My feet still hurt, my knee still hurts, and I'm exhausted.

But what I'll remember forever is the way that last turn felt, seeing all those people and that finish line.

My goal for this race was 1:15, and I thought it was an aggressive but reachable goal. We beat that time by over 5 minutes. I'm not sure it was the smartest idea to keep that pace up, but it worked (this time).

They're already talking about their next race, a 4-mile in West Springfield sometime in April.

Right now I'll be thrilled just to get another normal training run in. I doubt any race will top this one, for a long time. Maybe ever.

Thanks, everybody, who helped make this possible for me. Who encouraged me or gave me a reason to keep doing it.

(and we never did catch those girls; those young kids are faster than you'd think)

Book Review: Pattern Recognition

I finished Pattern Recognition (William Gibson) yesterday, and I figured I'd write up some thoughts on the subject.

I think the easiest way to describe how I feel about this book is that I wanted to stop reading it about 75% of the way through it, knowing that the setup was inevitably going to outdo the payoff. And I was right, of course. Not that the ending was bad, just that this type of story spends so much time setting up the ending that there's no way to make it fit your expectations.

Let's back up a bit. First off, Gibson does an amazing job with immersion. Sometimes I felt he was too clever for his own good with his analogies, but this is probably my own bias and not something inherent in his writing. Other times I felt that he lingered too long on trying to make me identify with Cayce's anxiety in a given situation. It got to the point where some passages were hard to read because I was so wrapped up in getting inside Cayce's weird head. This, again, is probably just my own taste.

The next big thing going on in this book is his use of the online world in a significant story way. He talks about web forums, hotmail accounts, google, and the net culture in general in a very familiar way. I kept going back and forth on how I felt about this. Basically, he's done what geeks are always asking for; he's made an exciting story involving these elements of the online world without granting them supernatural powers. Nobody hacked into the White House web page to launch a nuclear missile or anything. On the other hand, I live this world every day of the week and it's kind of boring. So, yeah, three cheers for getting it mostly right, but the reward for that is kind of pedestrian. It's not like "wow, he got the Mafia family structure -down pat-" ... it's like "wow, he got forum flame wars -down pat-." W00t, I guess.

Meh. I don't know.

I guess the key to understanding this book is that it isn't science fiction. This is a thriller/mystery in the same way a Dan Brown book is, though I enjoyed it more. We're not dealing with the technology of tomorrow as derived on today, but rather the technology of today as a big player in a somewhat generic thriller, with the same problem a lot of thrillers have: the ending doesn't flow smoothly out of the story, and leaves you mentally trying to piece everything together, trying to make sure the rules he's set up over the past few hundred pages haven't been broken. Sometimes that's part of the fun; for whatever reason this time around I was just glad to know it wasn't a complete screwjob at the end (OMG, it's all a dream, or some such).

All in all I was happy with the book. I enjoyed it (almost) every time I picked it up. But it's not going on any top ten lists any time soon, and I'm not going to go out of my way to look for other books like it.

Fair enough?

Binary rating: Thumbs up.

Seven Days

My first race is March 19, 7 days from today.

Today was supposed to be my last "long run" before the race, but the snow outside kept me indoors and the treadmill started squealing at 3 miles, so a short run it was. Oh well!

I conserve energy and keep my legs fresh this week by running short runs only, including a speed drill Monday and some nice slow recovery runs Wednesday and Thursday.

In other news, sitting in a silent house sipping a cup of coffee, watching it snow, your body simultaneously beaten and refreshed by a run and a hot shower ... does it get any better?

SW III Trailer, March 10/11

In a perfect world, the news that a new Star Wars Episode 3 trailer was debuting on March 10 (on TV, 11th in theaters) would be no big deal.

Instead, I mentally start counting down.

Damnit, it's like a reflex. I can't even control it.

Training snapshot

Still working on 10K training. Steve says I'm worrying too much about this but it's hard for me to not be competitive, even knowing I'm "competing" against myself.

Snapshot of my last few runs:

Saturday: 6 miles in 90:00
Monday: 3 miles in 30:00
Wednesday 4 miles in 44:30

Tomorrow is a slow 3 mile recovery run, and Saturday I will probably do 5 miles with Steve.

Running, Eating, and Playing Games

Ok, I gotta update more often.

On the home front, things are going pretty well. My mother is getting more and more stable, which is really good to see. Let's just hope it continues.

Thursday we played Munchkin with our friends Clint&Kate, and it was a rocking good time. Friday we grabbed some Chinese food and veg'd out in front of the TV.

Saturday I got in a 6 mile run, slow as hell but I finished it. Today I'm supposed to 3 miles fast, and I'm looking forward to it being done and over with in a much quicker time :). I am NOT looking forward to running 6 miles again this weekend.

Saturday evening we got dinner out using a gift certificate we got at XMas from (again) Clint&Kate. It's always nice to eat out on a gift certificate, because you have an excuse to indulge yourself. We hit Borders after dinner and just browsed around. I bought a couple of books (I'll post about them as I get into them), as well as the new Tori Amos CD. This is the second new CD I've bought in 2K5 (first was U2's new one) after a substantial drought. Feel free to interpolate re: crackdown on file sharing, but really I've always bought the new albums by the select few artists whose work I consistently admire.

I say that, but then again this is only the 3rd U2 CD I've bought. Meh.

Sunday we got a lot of "have to do this" work done in the first half of the day. Homework, bills, housework, etc. I still have to get my car inspected, feh. Do that today I guess (no real choice :) ).

Over the weekend I also got in some good World of Warcraft time. My Warlock is L28, and I got up to 24 with my Mage playing with Clint. Good times! Still, the server Clint and I play on was down all day Saturday and into Sunday, and my primary guild server had a 30 minute queue Sunday night. So I spent a fair bit of time playing where I didn't want to be, feeling frustrated.

Days gone by

Damnit, I let a whole week go by without posting here. The whole point of this was to force myself to write more stuff down. That only works if I stick with it, right?

To be fair, I had an excuse. My mother was back in the hospital for a week after a medication change didn't go as well as hoped. She's doing okay now and is back home, though. My wife had a severe cold and I had a severe case of "playing too much World of Warcraft."

And now I have a severe case of "need to get some work done" so I'm gonna cut this short.

Musical Memories

Lately I've been listening to entire artists or albums rather than just leaving winamp on shuffle. Yesterday I went on an Iron Maiden binge, for example.

Today I browsed around until I stumbed onto an album I hadn't heard in years: Angel Rat, from Voivod.

Of course, there's a story behind this album.

As a high school student, I didn't have much in the way of musical experience. I ended up finding a college radio station out of Amherst College, where a late night DJ had a program called Disneyfist. I still remember this!

One late night while listening to Disneyfist, I dialed in and won this album. This was a major pain in the neck; I had to somehow get to Amherst and pick it up and had no car. I got it, eventually, and hell if I wasn't going to listen to it!

At first, I didn't really enjoy it much. But I didn't have as much music then as I do now (heh) so I ended up listening to it a dozen times or so and it really grew on me.

I eventually bought another one of their albums, which had a cover of Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine, which cemented my decision that the band was something cool. I had never heard the original of course, and didn't until years later when I borrowed a Best Of album from my mother.

The story spirals out from there, of course, and it gets far less interesting (if possible).

But the entire story, and threads reaching out from it in dozens of directions, slowly filled my mind as the album progressed (peaking when the title track started). I can even summon up the smell of my bedroom when I had the album (and listened to it over and over) -- the cheap overstuffed living room chair I used as a computer desk combined with the odor of candle wax.

And that is why I love music. It's not that I particularly love this album, or this band. But how else could I so clearly summon such concrete memories of a time 15 years or so in the past?

Go buy an album and listen to it. Sometimes random shuffle just isn't the right thing to do.

Welcoming Steve home

Thursday, we went to the base to welcome Steve home, which was an interesting event. It was a pretty subdued occasion, only like a dozen soldiers were coming home, so even with a full family there to welcome each one you're not talking about a mob or anything. But it was definitely memorable.

To set the scene, we're inside, in like a big garage- or cafeteria-type room (concrete floor, tall ceiling, bare walls, and a garage door leading in). There are maybe 12 tables set up, and a big table with coffee, kool-aid, and pastries (manned by USO volunteers). You've got fifteen to twenty family groups here, toddlers with "welcome home daddy" signs and older parents looking kind of serious. You've got Marines in camo milling around talking to the families. There's this sort of "everything is normal, how's the kids, how about those Pats, lousy weather today, eh" vibe going on, which slowly erodes as time passes and people realize how close they are to seeing their loved ones again.

Then I was able to witness a cool event; I heard one person tell another "they're almost to the front gate." This got repeated through the crowd until I heard (seconds later) someone say, "They're in the parking lot!" It was like all the pent up energy keeping the crowd near-silent came to a boil and everybody was chattering and moving around to get ready. There are all these flashes going off as people took pictures, and this look of deadly seriousness started to appear on some of the women's faces. "My husband/son/whatever is about to see me and I'm locked in" kind of look. Hard to describe.

When the garage door opened, the whole crowd started clapping. The bus pulled in and as the door opened the applause got louder and people started hooting and whistling. Marine after Marine stepped out and got swarmed by their loved ones.

Steve got out, and his two sons threw down their signs and charged him. I actually got off a picture of him on his knees with his two boys in his arms, his daughter and wife a couple steps away running towards him. It was a magic moment. Seconds later, all four of them are totally burying him and he's practically hidden from everyone else. Finally they let up and he gets to shake hands and hug everybody who was there. Maybe 10 minutes of "hi, thanks for coming" "welcome home" "we missed you" etc went by, and then Brenda pushed him into the minivan and they drove off.

And we went home. It was kind of surreal, because you had all this anticipation, all this emotion, and then it was over. On an intellectual level we knew he was home, but something about it didn't feel solid, because the event itself took place at a weird spot.

This was cured on Saturday when we went back out there and spent a few hours with him and the family just shooting the shit. It was a relaxed time, and it sort of re-established the fact that he was home and things were returning to normal.

Welcome home, Steve. We missed you!

Dy-Nast-Y?

What a weekend!

Superbowl Sunday, obviously, was the highlight. I ran 5 miles in the morning and came home to watch the Pats step up BIG TIME. Go Pats! We'll be telling our kids (if we have kids, heh) about these years, I tell you.

Saturday was a more laid back day, lots of food preparation, TV watching, and video game playing. Not bad at all!

Along those lines, I have some random thoughts for you:

• Jess's brother Steve is on his way home; he should be back on US soil by now and perhaps home this weekend!
• Season One of 24 was groundbreaking, but a little weak at the end (to me).
• I still can't wait to start Season Two.
• Shrek 2 was still entertaining even the second time around.
• "Roving Rally" just doesn't have the same ring that Victory Parade does.
• WoW is still fun; I'm creeping up on having 4 or 5 L20 characters. Silly me.

It's Friday, and nobody wants to work. Discuss.

Ah, lunch break. Work beckons, but does so very weakly. Like a tiny little insect under a big glass dome.

So, for your pleasure, here are some random tidbits.

• I ran 3 miles today, bringing my weekly total to 13. This is the most I have run in a week, ever, so I feel pretty badass today.
• I am scheduled to run 5 miles on Sunday. Not sure how I'll do that, though. Treadmill? Home? Gym? Or outdoors? I need to find a 5-mile outdoor route if I'm going that way. Either way, 5 miles is most definitely a distance record for me.
• I heard from my brother for the first time in 8 months. Eight months! Evidently he's alive and mostly well, and has changed religions again (LDS evidently doesn't just refer to that Star Trek IV joke). Very interesting.
• Jess's brother Steve should be home from Iraq within a few weeks, maybe even two weeks. Here's hoping for a safe and uneventful series of flights home.
• My 2 all-day classes got canceled for next week. Hmm, I guess this means I can call Charter and get them to bring me HDTV!

Midweek Braindump

Sorry about that long post last time, got carried away. Today's is just a random mess.

I still have no HD cable; I emailed Charter and they haven't responded. I'll have to call them and do this the old-fashioned way. Damnit, join the 21st century, people.

The external HDD is working out great, though. Having all my music at my fingertips at work, no CD-swapping ... it's a beautiful thing. I'm hearing music I haven't heard in ages, because I just don't listen at home as often as I used to.

Steve should be coming home from Iraq in a couple weeks. Step one in that process is done; he's been moved from one place in Iraq to another. In about a week, he gets on a plane for California. A week or so after that, he should be home. We're all looking forward to that.