The Other End of Sunset

French, and English, at the same time

2011-10-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

Hello my OtherEnders.

It's been a while since I've felt like writing.

Snowblind
I can't get away
--Styx

I've done some writing for work, and I've really meant what I said. I built a company that can -- and will -- save the underbanked billions of dollars. I plan on transforming an entire industry. Every minute I spend thinking about it, every new hire we make, every new product we push… they all make me more convinced that ZestCash can change the world.

But there is another part of me that writes. It's sad, it's forlorn. (And, apparently, it's redundant).

I never knew it was part of me. It first raised its ugly head when JR got sick.

That side of me is driving right now.

It's understood
that Hollywood
sells Californication
--Red Hot Chili Peppers

I described Jeanne's death here. She passed on in the afternoon of June 23rd, 2006.

// Side note: "Passed on" is such a silly way to say "died", don't you think? You get passed on an expressway, not in life, nor in death. //

When Jeanne died, I was holding her hand. I couldn't feel the minute she died, like in the movies. Her hand was cold, slightly blue, and still, even before she died. The nurse told me when she died. Just about 1:30 in the afternoon.

I didn't feel anything at first after she died. Just … quiet. Still. Not good quiet, like in a library. Bad quiet, like the stillness between a heartbeat and the next when you have hurt someone, badly, and they find out.

Then I took a handful of Ativan and went to sleep. Everyone left the next day, but our two rescue dogs were still with me. Minnie, the Dalmatian, and Tyrone, the Brown-Dog-of-Mixed-Parentage.

Back on the chain gang
--The Pretenders

Almost two years ago, Minnie started walking with her head down, below her shoulders, and dragging a foot slightly. We thought she had a back problem, so we gave her pain killers, and assumed she was just getting a bit arthritic.

Then it got worse. Much worse. Suddenly.

We did X-ray after X-ray after CAT scan after MRI … And nothing made sense. Until the doctor had the idea of scanning Minnie's brain.

Revealing a large tumor that was killing her.

// Side note: Ever since we've been a couple, SL has tucked in both dogs every night. She has a particular set of words she starts with, and ends with, and a cadence that both dogs recognized. It's a thing of beauty, light splayed across a wall from a prism in the window, the first day of spring. You should envy me for getting to hear it. //

A few weeks after we found her tumor, Minnie lay in bed next to me, with her eyes partly closed listening to SL giving her a final tuck-in. The tuck-in ended just before the vet injected poison into her front paw, stopping her heart.

I knew when Minnie died. I could feel her heart stop. And feel her postural muscles give way.

Tyrone missed Minnie a lot for a while, but then settled into his role as family guardian. He would sit between SL and anyone he didn't entirely trust. When she was pregnant, Tyrone stared balefully at SL's personal trainer every time he touched her. It was clear that he was watching.

When Elisabette was born, Tyrone changed his focus from just SL to cover our new pack member as well. He sat in the doorway to Elisabette's nursery when SL was feeding. Nobody was getting past him. His job was to protect everyone when I wasn't around, and he took that job seriously.

A few weeks ago, Tyrone started walking more slowly, his head below his shoulders. This time, we didn't think it was his spine. We found a large mass, about the size of a tennis ball, just behind his front leg.

He had cancer of the blood.

Every day, he'd get a bit slower, and have a bit more trouble getting up the stairs. But he still blocked the doorway if I wasn't there, and he still barked at the doorbell.

He wasn't going to let cancer stop him from doing his job.

Two days ago, he lay on a blanket, in our front yard, listening to SL give him his final tuck-in. He lifted his head and looked at her. As the drugs took over, he lowered his head, but didn't stop looking at her until the end.

I had my arms around him. I felt him die.

I don't like illusions
I can't see them clearly
-- Sick Puppies

// Side note: Yes, I perceive the irony of the song lyric I just wrote. It wasn't accidental. //

God, I hate cancer. It shouldn't exist. We should have cured it. Or made it a chronic but manageable disease.

We can bomb arbitrary countries back to the Stone Age, but we can't cure cancer?

It's possible we are spending our time and money on the wrong problems.

// Side note: I almost always write on long plane rides. Is it possible I don't like traveling because this part of me wants to come out? //

Sometimes a change
is not enough
--Lagwagon

I have mixed feelings about death. Odd, I know, but bear with me for a second.

I miss Jeanne. Every day. I miss Minnie. Every day. I miss Tyrone. Every minute.

For good, or for ill, the pain fades over time. It becomes less like a knife, and more like a sprain. It doesn't cause agony, but you don't especially want to stand on it.

I think that analogy stinks, but it's the best I have. Sorry.

The mixed feelings are that I got to be with Jeanne at her last conscious moment, and her last Earthly one.

I got to hold Minnie's head as she lost the ability to hold it herself whilst shedding her mortal coil.

I got to feel Tyrone's breath fading from his body. He wasn't scared. He was strong, and brave.

In my heart, I know he's chasing Minnie around now, happy as a clam to be young and healthy. But I also know he wishes he could stand between SL and the rest of the world.

// Side note: There's nobody in the window seat next to me. Which is good, since it lets me look out the window to hide my tears. Not so manly, am I, now? //

After Tyrone was gone, I had SL leave, so she wouldn't see me picking his body up.

The dead don't look like they do on TV. It turns out that postural muscles are more important to looking "alive" than you might think.

SL will go to sleep tonight, for the first time, with me traveling but without Tyrone at the foot of her bed. She will feel that same silence.

I would give just about anything to spare her that feeling.

But I can't. The first step to getting past an addiction is to admit you are powerless.

I guess I'm addicted to death. I am powerless over it.

At some point, I'll be the one passing on. Perhaps it will be on a motorcycle, with me making a mistake in traffic on the freeway. Or with some distracted soccer mom leaving me a greasy streak down the side of a road, while talking to her nanny on the phone.

Or, maybe it will be cancer. Or some other disease we could have cured if we had not chosen to invade Iraq.

I don't want to die alone.

That said, SL deserves better than to sit next to me, waiting for a nurse to tell her I'm dead. She should be sitting somewhere comfortable, watching the sun go down, with a glass of rose champagne in her hand, when some nameless, faceless functionary comes to tell her I'm dead.

And I really hope that Elisabette doesn't have to hold my hand when I die. I don't want that image in her head.

Subdivided
In the mass production zone
--Rush

But there's nothing I wanted more than to be with JR, Minnie, and Tyrone when they died. I wanted them to know that I was grateful for their time in my life, and to offer what comfort I could.

So, perhaps I'm selling SL and Elisabette short. Or, perhaps, like Tyrone, I want to be doing my job, to the last, to protect them from what I can, shield them with my body, my heart, my soul.

Protect them from seeing Death. My death.

It's dark outside the plane now. We have outrun the sun. And, perhaps, it's time for me to put my keyboard down.

I've made myself cry. Did I make you cry? Or just make you want to go hold someone so tightly that they will always remember.

Remember the happiness, the love, the fullness. Just, maybe, for a time, feel power over death.

Bring back the sun. Or thrive in the starlight.

'cause your friends don't dance
And if they don't dance,
well, they're no friends of mine
--Men Without Hats

Trim the plants around the cameras

2011-08-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

Well I guess you scared me too
--Concrete Blonde

First, let me shout in jubilation that the West Memphis Three were freed today, 18 years after a huge, terrible, awful miscarriage of justice.

Sadly, instead of walking out of prison as clearly free men, they are walking out of prison under a most bizarre legal arrangement that has them proclaiming their innocence, while the criminal justice sees them as guilty. Kind of.

But, at least they are out of jail.

I wonder what each one thought as they felt the Arkansas sun on their face, smelled the late summer honeysuckle, heard cars go by. All the same as when they were in prison, but, this time, wearing street clothes, with nobody to stop them walking across the street, no guns, no guards.

Do you think they are slightly scared? The world of the last two decades was awful and unfair… but they were used to it.

I wonder. Is the joy balanced with terror?

I started looking for a warning sign
--Coldplay

I'm sitting at my desk in the corner of the main room of my company, listening to music. Pretty normal day… well, except that most days I don't get to spend much time at my desk, but let's ignore that for now, ok? You'd normally find me drinking coffee, or water from my water bottle.

// Side note: really, don't use the plastic water bottles, think of the landfill waste!! //

However, at the moment, I'm drinking neither water nor coffee. I'm drinking a Canada Dry ginger ale from a can.

The can is showing ads for characters in the upcoming movie "Captain America".

Am I the only one that perceives a bit of irony in a drink called **Canada** Dry showing ads for Captain **America**? An unusual marketing arrangement.

I'm quiet you know.
You make a first impression
--Howie Day

We are hiring like mad at my startup company, ZestCash. (Yes, if you're interested, we are hiring software engineers, machine learning experts, product managers, and relationship managers.)

This week we interviewed 4 software engineers, two product managers, and two senior non-engineering related people.

Wow. My calendar looks worse even than it did at the end of my days at the Big G in the sky.

But it is a really good use of time. Perhaps the single most important thing a startup CEO can do.

It's super important to hire well at small companies. Hiring matters everywhere, I think, but mediocre employees can bounce along at large companies. Weak hires don't add much, other than cost, but they also don't risk the company's existence.

At a startup, bad hires can sink the ship. A single bad hire sets a cultural tone that excellence doesn't matter. One bad worker makes everyone else work less.

And, at least at my startup, there is always a lot of work to do. If everyone works a little less, we are less likely to hit our targets. Thus, bad hires make it less likely that the company will thrive (or, I guess, even survive).

If you'll let me use a bit of "HR speak", talent is the whole game. I'm obviously not the only person who thinks this. Mark Suster agrees. Dave McClure does as well. Marc Andreessen has a slightly more nuanced view, but doesn't contradict the point.

If your product space is dumb, or is too small make a viable company, then perhaps talent won't be enough. But, otherwise it's all about great employees.

I believe that, given the right talent, you can find a good product-market fit. Thus, I spend a lot of time on hiring. We had the same general view at Google, where I spent at least 25% of my time dealing with hiring in some form or another.

// Side note: It's pretty cool to be able to compare my little startup to Google! //

Over my career, I've hired literally thousands of people. I've fired a few. I've laid off many… thanks to Schwab, mostly. I have a group of folks that tend to move from company to company with me.

I get asked a lot how I think about hiring, what should candidates say to get my attention, or how resumes matter, etc.

Thus, this blog post: How does Douglas think about hiring.

First, a few words from our sponsor. I don't read cover letters. I don't care what they say. Maybe professional recruiters do, but I don't. Don't waste time writing one. Also, I don't care if your resume is really pretty. Fonts, etc., don't impress me. It's amazing what Microsoft Word can do for you. Keep it simple.

// Side note: If you write your resume in LaTeX, I will be impressed. If you don't know what LaTeX is, don't worry about it. //

OK, so what do I care about?

On a trivial note, I care about spelling. "Principal" is not the same as "principle". Make sure you know which is which. I recently saw an applicant who had experience in "discreet math". I don't think I care that you do your computation behind closed doors.

And, by all the saints, spell check the stupid document. Really, Word will put a squiggly red line under a word it doesn't recognize. Look for the squiggle. If Word doesn't recognize the word, you're probably spelling it wrong.

// Side note: The squiggly also might be under some Google-related term. Not sure why that would be… //

For alternative spelling advice, do a Google search for the word, and pay attention to the spelling correction suggested.

Lest there be any confusion, let me be clear: If you can't even QA your own resume, you almost certainly won't be working in my code base.

My company writes virtually all of its code in Ruby. You'd think, therefore, that you need to know Ruby to get hired. Not true. We will let you interview in whatever language you like (as long as one of us speaks that language!).

But you really don't want to put down that you know Ruby if you don't. We are going to ask you to write code on the board. If you say you know Ruby, we are going to ask you to write in it. And if your code stinks, it will reflect badly on you. Stick to a language you know. I have nothing intrinsically against Java, C, C++, or even (horror) C#. You get my point.

If you come interview at ZestCash (and did I mention we are hiring?), here's what will happen. We will read your resume (that you submit via our jobs page).

First, I'm going to look at your education. It's not a determining factor, but it does have signaling value. Did you go to some super snooty school and manage a C average? I'll be interested in what you did instead of studying. Did you go to a really not-great school, but come out with a 4.0? I'm going to be excited to talk to you.

// Side note: By the way, I went to a second-tier undergraduate school. My overall GPA was pretty good, but nothing to write home about. //

Some of you
might still be in that place
--Eminem

I'm going to look at your job history next. Have you jumped from job to job, staying a year at each place? I'm going to wonder what was firing your jets to leave so quickly. The lifespan of a job seems to vary by industry. I once interviewed for a job at a hedge fund (no, don't ask, it was a bad idea from start to finish, but that's another story). The head of the hedge fund asked why I had so many jobs, for such short periods. I have a series of 4 - 5 year stints. Although pretty normal for tech companies, apparently it's abnormal for financial services?

I'm particularly looking for 12 month jobs. I've got one on my resume. Feel free to ask me about it. I'd ask you.

And when you answer, I'd suggest that you not spend a lot of time throwing your old boss under the bus. Every success has a lot of factors… and failures do as well. I'm going to respect you more if you talk about what went wrong including what you didn't do well.

And I'm not going to be blown away if your answer is "well, job #2 gave me a 20% raise." I am not going to get into a bidding war with your next employer -- that's not how we work -- so I'm now wondering if I'm going to be able to keep you more than a year.

Then, I'm going to look at the path of your jobs. I want to know you did interesting things at each job. I don't care if you decided to go into management -- not everyone does. I don't even care, much, about getting progressively bigger titles. I care that you are trying different things, learning at each level, teaching at each level.

Sadly, I may also have to look at your visa status. Startup Visa program anyone?

OK, enough paper stuff. Time to do some work.

One of my engineers (or product managers) is going to call you. This "phone screen" will be about 45 minutes long.

// Side note: If I call you, the call will probably be a bit shorter, since I talk really (really) fast. Don't take it personally. //

The phone screen will cover your experience -- so be prepared to walk through your resume. This is probably the only time you'll have to do so! Prepare!

Then, you'll be asked a technology architecture question, to see if you can think through some tech gunk. We probably won't ask you to write code, since that doesn't work over the phone, but we might ask you to, for example, walk through the architecture for building a crawler.

After that screen, the interviewer will put a score (we currently use 1 - 4 scores, with "1" meaning "no way" and "4" meaning "can the interviewee start tomorrow?"), and a few sentences of feedback into our tracking system.

If the scores are south of 2, we'll probably end the process here.

If the scores are around 3 -- as most are -- we will have a second phone screen with you, with a different person asking similar questions. At this point, we will either invite you to come in for onsite interviews, or we will end the process. There's no option for additional phone screens.

Our onsite process involves interviews and homework. If we are going to bring you in to talk to us, we are going to give you a piece of homework to do in advance. The goal is for you to spend a few hours attacking some problem, usually a mix of architecture and a bit of code.

The first 30 minutes of your onsite visit will be presenting this homework to a group of us. We'll ask some questions, but we don't expect (or want) polished presentations. We want to see some code (that runs, by the way!) and a reasonable architectural diagram. The 30 minutes lets more of us see you think and talk, and gives you the chance to see several of us. We want you to want us, too!

After that, you will have a series of interviews. You will have at least two engineering interviews. Each will be 45 minutes long. At least one will require you to write code on the board, and the other will ask you to solve some architectural tasks. These interviews will be hard. If you aren't sweating a bit at the end… something went wrong.

At some point during the day, you will be interviewed by a non-tech person. That interviewer will be testing for cultural fit. Even if you're brilliant, you may not be the best fit for our culture. And, to be fair, we may not be the best fit for you! To be a Zestian, you have to be comfortable with our culture. We eat lunch together every day -- and nobody wants to sit next to someone boring, right? Everyone talks about everything. Although people have focus areas, they aren't wearing blinders. You might be asked a technical question by a finance person, or be asked to do some (seemingly) random analysis for me. It happens. We aren't a great place to work for people who struggle to get things done when distracted.

At the end of the day, normally, you'll see me. If my calendar doesn't allow it, let me apologize in advance. I'm going to ask a few questions, and give you a chance to ask about the business. You should have some questions. It looks bad if you don't.

Then, you'll be done! W00t! You can head off to the bar!

But we can't.

Right after you leave, we will all gather in a conference room. Each of us will give our feedback -- including that 1 - 4 score. Our goal is to reach consensus on whether you are smart or not. You could have tanked on the algorithms question, but done a good job trying to figure it out. You could have completely whiffed on my thinking question, but been interesting in how you tried. You get the picture -- we cared less about the answers than the ways you tried to answer.

Truly, the journey is the destination.

We will get back to you within 24 hours, in almost all circumstances. We appreciate your time, and want to be respectful. And, if we like you, we want you to like us!

Hopefully, you'll love the offer, say yes, and we will have a great time together solving really hard problems.

(Did I mention we are hiring?)

So, if you've read this far, you have a pretty clear picture of how we hire. But is it clear why we hire that way?

1) We hire for horsepower. I can teach you skills. I can't teach you to be smarter.
2) We want you to be a well-rounded person.
3) I want you to believe in what we do -- we are not just a company, we are a mission.

That's right. Not just another company, a mission. Pay attention now, let's talk about the mission…

Our product? A short-term loan that is about 50% the cost of the alternative.
Our mission? To save the underbanked billions of dollars.
The best part of every day? Talking to a customer who, because of our loan, can pay their rent, fix their car, pay a health care bill, buy school supplies for a child. You get it. We care about our customers.

Do you want to join us?

Rise above
we're gonna
rise above
--Black Flag

Customer Service matters

2011-08-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

One more time,

loud as you can

--Eminem

I was in Australia for a week recently, carrying (sadly) all of my devices. I was carrying a MacBook Air, an iPad, and my iPhone. I hate traveling with that many bits of hardware, but, c'est la vie, I guess.

I was carrying the Air in case I needed to project stuff during my talks. Turned out I didn't, so that was a waste, but I didn't know that.

I was carrying the iPad because it's my primary device now -- I use it to read, to do brief emails, listen to music, etc.

I was carrying my phone to have an easy to use phone (yes, I could have used GVoice, FaceTime, etc., on my iPad, but I haven't bothered to set any of them up. Sorry.)

Now, I normally turn international data roaming off on any device I carry, relying on wifi wherever I am to grab content and email. However, this trip included loads of time where there wasn't any easily available wifi.

Ergo, I left data roaming turned on for my iPhone.

I'm grateful that they show me the way

'cause I could never know

--Steve Taylor

So, if you do this, you land in , and immediately get a text telling you that "international data rates apply of $ per MB".

OK, thanks, I get it. Although I appreciate the warning, I deliberately ignored it. I needed my data, so I was resigned to paying a lot for it.

And having ignored the warning, I ignored the data rates themselves. I didn't care about the cost at that moment, I cared about the functionality.

On my 3rd day traveling, I got a text (from some random number) telling me that "[my] international data usage is high. Please call AT&T at ". OK, I've got other things to worry about, but I dial the number, put my phone on speaker, enter the dozens of different numbers asked for by the IVR, and wait.

I'm not just sitting here during this wait, I'm actually trying to work. But every time a voice comes on the line, I stop what I'm doing to pay attention in case it's actually a human.

I wait about 15 minutes for a real human, but have listened to recorded humans about every minute during the process. With such a high rate of interruption, I got virtually no work done.

Heaven forbid

you end up alone

and don't know why

--the fray

At 15 minutes, another recording comes on, but this one tells me what the call is about -- they want to sell me a new data plan. They have wasted my time in order to sell me some new product.

I hate that. I don't care about AT&T's sales goals at this moment.

// Side note: I don't care about AT&T's sales goals at ANY moment, actually, but I was particularly disinterested at that moment. Back to the main line now. //

Having realized that this is a sales call, I hang up. The (annoyed) finger having writ, moves on.

667

The Neighbor of the Beast

--a T-shirt

A few days later, I get another text from that same random number. This time, the message is "due to your high data usage, we are turning off your data plan. Your data access will not be turned back on, even in the US, unless you contact us at ".

OK, now we've changed from a minor annoyance to a fairly major one. So I dial the number… and have the same experience as before. This time, however, I wait for a real human -- it takes about 20 minutes.

The real human that I talk to is a customer service agent. Now keep in mind, my only goal is to get my data plan turned back on. Nothing more, and nothing less. Not a terribly hard problem.

However, the customer service agent can't turn it back on. I *must* sign up for an international data plan to get the data turned back on.

So, I listen to the sales pitch, and sign up for the cheapest plan. This gets me my data back. Yay!

And, it yields *less* revenue to AT&T. The amount I paid for my plan (even annualized) would be less than the expected international data costs would have been, given my travel plans.

Yes, that's right, not only did AT&T annoy me, they yielded themselves less revenue!

Some marketing person should lose their job, along with whoever does financial planning and analysis at AT&T. Really, the core value proposition is to generally maximize revenue while making your customers happy.

In this case, neither goal was hit. W00t, AT&T!

Know that these things

will never change for us at all

--Snow Patrol

But there is one good aspect to this whole process: The agent I talked to. He recognized immediately that he couldn't do what I wanted (ie., turn my data back on), and gave me a clear explanation of what his options were (ie., sign me up for some data plan).

Although counterintuitive, this is exactly what customer service should be able to do. No "escalate to my manager" to make a decision, no "here is the smoke-and-mirrors to get you to be happy again". The agent had one option in the situation and was clear about it.

Sadly, I didn't pay attention to his name. However, if any of you work for AT&T, go find him and tell him he did a great job. Good customer service is worth its weight in gold.

At ZestCash (my company), we have gone a long way to hire really (really) talented people to provide our borrowers service. We call them "relationship managers" not because we are playing buzzword bingo, but because it captures how we want them to act.

An RM on the phone has the ability to make almost all changes to a borrower's account. There is never a need for an RM to escalate to make a decision, and our RMs know their options for an account before the call even starts (we have great systems, not surprisingly).

Although I'm hugely annoyed at AT&T, my experience with their customer service was great! They ended up with less revenue from me, but that's a marketing problem, not a service one!

I hope -- trust -- that if anything goes wrong, my customers feel that their relationship managers care about them, are exceptionally clear, and make good decisions.

Maybe the gypsy lied

2011-06-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

All you have to change
Is everything you are
--Pink

5 years ago today, Jeanne Michelle Russell won her battle with cancer. I wrote about it here.

I was sitting with her, at about 1:30pm pacific, holding her hand, in the little room down the hall.

She asked me if I was ready.

I said yes.

I was an idiot.

And who shall wear the starry crown?
--Alison Krauss

I met Jeanne -- I called her JR -- when I was at Schwab. If you're interested in the story, it's all laid out, in embarrassing detail, in my blog.

From this distance, it all looks different. I feel differently - I've released on some of what I got wrong. I've gotten more upset at myself about other things. I understand some things more, and find others even less clear, fuzzy, as if in a haze from a distance.

It feels a bit like a sharp object wrapped in cotton for shipping. If you hold it "right", it doesn't hurt.

But most definitely if you grab it by the point, it still draws blood.

What made you forget
that I was raw?
--LL Cool J

Dear Jeanne:

All these years later, I still celebrate your birthday. I remember how your eyes shone when I brought you flowers, or bought you a present, or said you were lovely.

And I still mourn the day you died.

I know that Minnie is with you now. I hope you are remembering that she likes to rip the squeaker out of her toys, and vivisect the little stuffed ones.

Get her lots of toys, she deserves them.

And don't forget to keep her away from the hot dog buns. Remember the year that she grabbed the bread off of the little table that we put beside the bench in the back? How sick she was for days? It was sad… but, really, it was funny. You know it was, even though you didn't say so at the time.

When you lose something
You can't replace.
Could it be worse?
--Coldplay

Brown is lying at the foot of the bed, panting. He's getting lots of love. Lots of treats -- he still likes the Greenies best. Lots of pats -- but he still hates to be groomed. He eats mostly soft food these days. I know, I'm spoiling him. But he's a good boy. You'd be amazed at how much more pack-like he's become. He wants to hang with us, he kisses us, he gets bummed when I travel.

He's become a bit like Minnie, actually. The best of him, with a touch of her. It's wonderful.

I think I'm better too. Perhaps a bit more like the man you always thought I was. I'm a little calmer, and a little more understanding. I hug more often, and tell people that I love them more.

I learned that from you.

You'd really like Sonya. You both think the same things are funny, and both love wedding magazines. Really, what is that all about? Regardless, you'd be pals.

And Elisabette is remarkable. Luckily for her, she doesn't look or act like me at all. But I'm still going to read to her, kiss her, and try to do my best with her. I wish you could say hi to her.

So much of what's good in me came from you. When I'm sad, I try to think about all the good you did, and all the people you touched.

But, really, I just feel my way into the parts of me that wouldn't exist without you.

I shall never forget you. Five years on, I'm still crying.

And suddenly
I become part of your past
--The Fray

Musings on technology, product, and customer service

2011-03-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

Dressed up like a million-dollar trouper
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper
--TACO

There's an article on Slashdot today talking about equity trades "in picoseconds". Fascinating stuff. Trading systems are complex -- there may, or may not, be a central arbitrator of trades. Usually there are only two parties to a trade, although there can be more. (I don't think there can be less, under most assumptions of mental health.) There must be a way to settle trades between parties.

For a trade to matter, two parties have to agree on a security, a price, and a clearing method. Clearing methods are usually automatically selected, so that shouldn't take any extra time.

But you still have to find a security and a counterparty.

Trading at picosecond speeds? it takes about 3 picoseconds for light to travel a millimeter. The average ethernet cord -- the thing that goes from your computer to the wall plug -- is 5 feet long, which is about 1,500 millimeters. So, it will take about 5,000 picoseconds for a single pulse of light to get from your computer to your wall. Add on a substantial amount of time -- in milliseconds, anyway -- to get through your router and to your ISP.

And let's not forget about the time it will take your packet to traverse them-there-Interwebs to the arbiter (or to the counterparty). I'm sitting on a good network, and I'm about 90 milliseconds from google.com. They have pretty good connectivity. Like, really good. And they are 90 milliseconds away.

90 milliseconds is about 90,000,000,000 picoseconds. (Just to put that number in perspective, there are about 197 million square miles on the surface of the earth. Which is about 500 times fewer than 90-milliseconds-as-picoseconds.).

We may be talking about trading in picoseconds, but, if we are, we aren't making any sense. In other words, where's the Tardis?

Your faith was strong
but you needed proof
--Leonard Cohen

I'm crazy into bags -- laptop bags, messenger bags, suitcases, whatever, I like them. And I own an unreasonable number of them.

But, still, I'm always in search of the perfect .

Lately, I've been wanting a way to hold my phone onto my shoulder bag strap, so that it's easier for me to talk on my headset when in an airport. I use a binaural wired headset, like the one that comes with the iPhone (but not that one, I use one with more comfortable earplugs and a longer cord).

Even though my headset has a longer cord, it still isn't really long enough for my phone to be in my pocket while using it.

Hence, my search for some way to hold the phone on/in my bag. The obvious solution is a sock-like-thing that attaches to the strap of the bag.

Obvious, yes. Easy to acquire, no. I've tried several. Each has some failing -- too big, so the phone falls out; bit that holds it into the strap too weak, so it falls off. I've almost given up on the whole idea.

Until I found Waterfield bags (www.sfbags.com). They sell a few things that I really want, including a phone holder. (They also sell a cool gear bag, which I also use, but that's not the point of this post-let).

I ordered the phone holder last week, in black. Because black is slimming, you know.

Anyway.

I find it hard to tell you,
I find it hard to take
--Gary Jules

A day or so after my order, I got an email from Waterfield's customer service, letting me know it wasn't available in black, and apologizing. However, they could ship it out to me immediately in a different color.

I didn't care about the color that much, so I picked one that was available.

And about 5 minutes later, I had another nice email from customer service, thanking me and apologizing again.

I got the sock-thing the next day.

I am blown away by how friendly and competent the support folks were. The response was fast, accurate, and left me feeling good about them not having the color I wanted.

Well done, gang; few places deliver so well.

I really (really) want to support places that get customer service right -- so please open a new tab in your browser, head over to sfbags, and buy something.

And, yes, the phone stays in the holder, and the holder stays on my bag strap. Thanks for asking.

I'll flag
I'll fall,
I'll falter
--Enya

I hate technology that is used in search of a problem. For example, I don't understand the towel holders in airport bathrooms that use the infrared sensor to know that your hands are in front of it so it can spit out some towels.

First, it never gives enough towels, so you sit there waving your hands in front of the sensor like concert goers at some hair metal band show holding a lighter.

Second, the sensor never works, so you spend a while trying to figure out whether to wave your hands, or leave your hands, or dance a jig in order to get your towels.

How about a simple design where you pull the towel down from the bottom and it rolls out from the holder. It can be perforated to ensure you don't get enough towels if that's an important design goal, but at least one knows what to do with it.

The technology doesn't help, why put it in place at all?

And don't get me started on full-body scanners in airports.

Technology is great for some things, but not for everything. We should focus the tech-bits where they can help, make our lives easier, not where we can just think of putting something.

I wonder how many picoseconds it takes to spit out a towel.

Science fiction,
double feature
Dr X will build a creature
--Rocky Horror Picture Show

The menu from the restaurant at the end of the universe

2010-10-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

Hi to all…

Since ZestCash launched, there's been a lot of discussion about our product, and the space as a whole. We thought it would be helpful to drill down on a few areas of our business, especially pricing and costs.

Come writers and critics

Who prophesize with your pen

--Bob Dylan

On our site, we lay out several options for short-term credit. Readers will note a few key points on that page. Most importantly, credit (of any sort) is more expensive than using savings to buy something.

Even so, people still need credit. A borrower who does not have access to traditional credit could go to a payday loan store or to a pawn shop. According to the FDIC survey of the un- and underbanked in the US, 30 million Americans have taken out a payday loan or a pawn loan in the past year. Clearly there is a need for this kind of credit.

Given that, I believe that people deserve to have credit that is reasonably priced, transparently offered, and fair. I don't believe anyone disagrees on this point.

However, thoughtful people can -- and should -- disagree on exactly how to provide that credit.

There is evidence that payday loans yield a marked increase in personal bankruptcies. There is also evidence that *lack* of access to payday loans leads to higher bankruptcy rates and higher costs for alternative credit-related products like bounced checks.

Both articles point to the need for credit, and the fact that people who get payday loans are right on the edge of financial ruin. Payday loans could push them over the edge -- or not having them when needed could push them over the edge.

The data is unclear. So, let me start with the hardest, most important question: What is a fair interest rate? This is hard because the question has so many facets, and so much importance to social policy.

You'll be singing in the rain

Said don't stop to the punk rock

--Blondie

First of all, let's be clear: APR is a good measure to use to compare credit options. It's been the standard for 30 years, and has been used to drive public policy discussions across many credit domains.

On our site, though, we suggest that total loan cost can also be a useful measure for short term credit. Let me explain why we say so.

For a given loan, with the same interest costs, APR varies with the length of the loan. Generally, all other things being equal, a shorter loan with the same out of pocket cost for a borrower, has a higher APR. If you were to stretch exactly that same loan out over a longer period of time, it would have a lower APR.

However, these two loans would have exactly the same out-of-pocket costs to the borrower, despite different APRs. The borrower will have paid the same dollar amount of interest for both loans.

Mullainathan and Shafir (2009) point out, in fact, that APR may not capture the way that payday loan borrowers actually make credit decisions.

This doesn't make APR a bad measure. It means that, under certain circumstances, looking at the cost -- the out of pocket costs -- is important to consider as well.

This is why we suggest looking at total loan cost on our site. We aren't trying to hide APR -- in fact, we list it on each page of the application -- we are just trying to help our customers understand their actual out-of-pocket costs.

There have been several attempts to set reasonable prices for credit. Many advocacy groups and governmental organizations have suggested that 36% APR is the appropriate interest rate for small dollar, subprime credit. This rate has been embodied in various state and federal regulations over the past few years.

The FDIC did a two-year study, the Small Dollar Pilot Program, to examine bank and credit union alternatives to payday loans and other high cost loans. They asked 28 banks to give loans to consumers at 36% APR or lower. The loans ranged from under $1,000 to $2,500. Overall, more than 30,000 loans were made, with loan durations of 12 - 18 months, and total loan principal of $40m.

The pilot showed reasonably low default rates, which is promising, and showed that traditional financial institutions can, with appropriate incentives, offer less expensive credit. This is very promising for the credit industry.

However, it's important to recognize the limitations of the study as well. The overall pilot -- the total loan principal -- was relatively small. This makes it harder to predict how the products would scale into the broader market.

Also, the banks didn't make profit on the loans: "However, given the small size of [loans], the interest and fees generated are not always sufficient to achieve robust short-term profitability." [FDIC final report, page 5].

Banks currently offer higher cost short-term credit products, especially overdraft protection. There is evidence that banks and other financial institutions don't offer lower cost short-term credit products because they compete with overdraft-related products.

Given that the FDIC pilot loans weren't profitable and compete with banks' other revenue streams, it's not surprising that the pilot participants aren't really marketing the products any longer.

This doesn't mean that 36% is the wrong rate. It means that, with current underwriting, it is difficult to make a profitable product at 36% APR. Better underwriting yields reduced default rates, which, in turn, should yield lower interest. This suggests that we should advance the state of the art in underwriting.

There is hope that underwriting can lower the costs of borrowing. BillFloat shows us that hope. BillFloat offers short-term loans for a low interest rate -- they are normally under 36% -- to pay a monthly utility bill. They are able to charge this little both because they are exceptionally smart and because loans to pay off a month of an ongoing utility bill have very low default rates. You want to keep your utilities on and you're accustomed to paying the bill, so defaults will be rare.

Although this isn't our market -- we offer more general cash loans, which is a segment of the market that has dramatically higher default rates -- this makes us optimistic, knowing that there is at least one company that is doing it.

The kids are all wrong

that's all I ever really learned

--Lagwagon

This is why we are working so hard on underwriting. If we can underwrite loans more effectively, we can offer credit at lower than current rates. Underwriting for a general loan -- without a specific purpose and with less historical data -- is harder; these loans have a higher default rate, and hence require higher prices. But if we can underwrite better, and lower the default rate, we can provide credit at lower costs and build a good business.

This is important: I am trying to build a business. I am not trying to build a nonprofit. Nonprofits can have great impact on the world, and many social changes have begun with nonprofits. However, we believe that long-lasting change in the financial services world requires a sustainable business model, one that generates profit.

Building a profitable business means pricing goods and services above their cost of production. In this space, the cost of production is the sum of how much it costs to acquire customers, the cost of the money lent out, and the rate at which people fail to pay off their loans. This last factor -- default rate -- is key. As default rates increase, pricing must increase as well to cover those costs.

This is what yields such high prices on subprime loans. We price our loans to cover defaults, based on our underwriting. We are already markedly less expensive than payday loans, and our aim is to be even less expensive over time.

Market pricing is very important; pricing competition is good. In fact, the Kansas City Federal Reserve found that competition between payday loan providers yielded lower prices. Adding our alternative products into the mix should increase downward pressure on payday loan prices, yielding substantial benefit to borrowers.

There has been a bit of confusion in some of the comparisons between our products and payday loans. This makes sense since there are a lot of moving parts in these products.

Before going into the comparison, I want to be clear that we understand our loans are expensive. There are cheaper options, and we explicitly recommend to our customers that they should use less expensive options if they can. To fail to make this recommendation would be neither transparent nor fair.

I was just passing through

must have been seven months or more

--Creedence Clearwater Revival

If a borrower doesn't have other options and needs a short-term loan, there are only a few options.

If a person wants to take out a payday loan, and will pay it back within two weeks -- without rolling the loan over -- then that person should not take out a loan from us. This is why we don't offer loans for less than two months -- our loans will not be less expensive for shorter loans than that. Again, we call this out clearly on the site.

Our loans are normally less expensive than other options, like pawn shop loans or payday loans. How can this be true? It's true because people don't normally pay their payday loans back after only one cycle, they normally require several cycles to pay them back.

If you don't have the money to pay your loan back after the first cycle, the payday loan provider will lend the money -- the same money -- to you again, but charge you fees again.

According to the Center for Responsible Lending, people roll over their loans 9 times. Other researchers have suggested that most people roll over their loans 6 times on average. Like it or not, payday loan borrowers normally roll over their loans.

Each time the loan is rolled over, new fees apply, but the principal remains unchanged. So, if you borrow $400 and pay $80 in fees for the first loan, two weeks later, you will pay another $80 in fees, but still owe $400 in principal. And so on until you pay off the entire principal.

If you roll this loan over once, you will pay $160 in fees ($80 for the loan, and another $80 for the rollover) and then pay an additional $400 (the principal) at the end of the second period. Thus, in one month, you will have paid $160 in fees and $400 in principal.

If you roll the loan over 4 times, you will have the loan for 8 weeks (4 loans at two weeks each), and will pay $320 ($80 * 4) in fees. At the end of the 8 weeks, you will also pay the $400 in principal back, for a total of $720.

Ok, to use round numbers, let's assume you roll your loan over 7 times. That will get you a total loan duration of 4 months (two weeks for the first loan, and 7 * 2 weeks for the rollovers, for a total of 16 weeks). You will owe $400 in principal -- at the end. You'll pay $80 for the first loan, and for each of the 7 rollovers, for a total of $640 in fees. All in, you will pay $1,040, since you pay both fees and principal back.

And a ZestCash loan? If you borrow $400 for 4 months, you will pay $80 every two weeks for the life of the loan. Just like a payday loan, right?

No, wrong.

Because at the end of the 4 months, in a ZestCash loan, you have paid off BOTH interest and principal. So, you will pay ZestCash a TOTAL of $640 (8 * $80), which includes the principal. Because ZestCash loans are installment loans, you pay principal and interest off at the same time.

So, in this example, our loan is $400 less expensive ($1,040 - $640) than a payday loan of the same duration.

The photograph on the dashboard
taken years ago
--REM

So, that's our story. People need credit, and sometimes their only option is a relatively expensive short-term loan. Although a 36% APR sounds great, it has proven difficult to create general purpose subprime loan products at that interest rate. There has been relatively little market pricing pressure on more expensive loans, so prices of the higher cost loans are not dropping.

I got involved in this space because I think this is a really important problem to be solved. I believe that the current market is not putting sufficient price pressure on subprime loan products, and that adding a markedly lower cost product that is sustainable will push prices down across the entire space. This cost decrease could put literally billions of dollars back into the pockets of subprime borrowers, who don't have a lot of extra cash to play with.

This is a complicated and controversial business to be in. However, if nobody tries to find a solution, nothing will ever change.

We are trying to find a solution.

We think entering the market at a significantly lower price point, and directing our resources toward developing better underwriting models, is the best way we can do that.

We're thrilled people are talking about the problem -- more ideas always yield better outcomes.

ZestCash launches!

2010-10-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

The waiting is the hardest part
--Tom Petty

Hi there, my OtherEnders. I've been really busy launching my new company, and have had almost no time to write. I'm sorry for the huge lag! I'm very excited that my company -- ZestCash -- has finally launched! We have been working hard on the product for many months, and are officially in the market today.

Move the heart, switch the pace
Look for what seems out of place
-Peter Murphy

News flash: The economy is in bad shape. The past few years have taken a huge toll on the world's economies. In the US, the economic crisis was the most severe downturn since the Great Depression.

The scale of the economic devastation is hard to understand. It's just so immense.

In December, 2008, California's unemployment rate stood at 5.7%. By August of 2010, the CA rate had climbed to 12.4%.

In one month alone -- January of 2009 -- almost 800,000 jobs were lost across the United States. That's roughly the equivalent of every man, woman, and child in San Francisco losing their job. All at once -- in one month.

// Side note: I hope most of the children in SF don't have jobs anyway, but that's not relevant to my analogy. Work with me here? //

Hurricane Katrina destroyed about 275,000 houses in her swath of destruction across the US. Banks foreclosed on 10 times as many homes -- 3 million homes -- in 2009.

Although there are many, many other examples of hardships, even this few casts the crisis into high relief.

The crisis also caused a very large number of banks to fail. These failures sharply reduced the amount of credit available -- in June 2009, almost 33% of all credit in the US economy was frozen, unavailable. Most of this credit was used by business for a variety of purposes.

However, the credit crunch also hurt regular people's ability to get credit.

Everyone needs credit. We use credit when we buy lunch, make a monthly payment toward our car, or in any of hundreds of other common ways. Here in Hollywood, you can even pay your parking meter with a credit card. It's just part of life.

But it's not a way of life for many Americans. There's an entirely separate credit system for people with bad credit, or no credit. It's called the "alternative financial system" (AFS). The AFS serves people who don't have good relationships with banks. They may have no bank at all, or may have a limited bank relationship that doesn't offer credit.

These people are often referred to as "underbanked".

He said "Do you want to know the truth, son?
I'll tell you the truth!"
--Iron Maiden

Before the current credit crunch, many of the underbanked might have been able to get a subprime credit card, from companies like Capital One or Providian. They would have paid a higher interest rate than you or I likely pay, but they'd have had credit.

Not any longer -- the subprime credit card providers have experienced the same credit issues as the rest of the economy, and have sharply reduced the number of cards they issue.

Unfortunately, that has left the underbanked with only 2 sources of credit -- payday loans and pawn shops. According to the FDIC, almost 10% of American households have taken out a payday loan or visited a pawn shop in the past year alone. That is almost 30 million people -- about the entire population of Canada.

For those of you who haven't ever taken out a payday loan (congratulations!), the process is disturbingly simple. You walk into a payday loan store, and walk up to a person (who is likely behind bulletproof glass). You give that person a check, dated two weeks in the future, for the amount of the loan and the fees. Then, happy days, you walk out the door with the loan principal in your pocket, and a very expensive loan on your back.

Payday loan users aren't bad people. Quite the opposite. Most people who take out a payday loan make between $15,000 and $45,000 per year at a job. They are teachers, bus drivers, waitresses, and handymen. More than half are single heads of households with children to support.

According to the Consumer Federation of America, one of the biggest problems with payday loans is they have to be paid off in one lump sum, usually two weeks to 30 days after the loan is created.

And they are very expensive.

How expensive? Payday loan fees are about $20 per $100 borrowed. So, if a borrower takes out a $300 loan (the average amount), they will pay $60 in fees. And must pay back the entire $300 in 14 days.

This loan structure doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If you don't have the money now, are you likely to be able to pay it all back -- plus a ton of fees -- from your next (probably already stretched) paycheck?

So what happens in two weeks, when the borrower doesn't have the $300 (plus $60 in fees, remember)? Usually, the payday loan company will "roll over" the loan. In exchange for another $60 in fees, they will let the borrower have another two weeks to pay off the loan.

The average payday loan is rolled over more than 6 times. That means the average payday loan borrower is paying more in fees -- as much as $420 -- than the principal of the loan -- $300.

And this is only over a period of a few months.

I later learned that consumer protection organizations, such the Center for Responsible Lending, were concerned with same issue, labeling it the debt trap, and that several authors had described how the problem has devastated many families.

I think there's a better way to provide needed credit to people with bad credit. That better way should be a loan that borrowers can actually pay back to help improve their lives, not ruin them. This is the kind of loan that ZestCash offers.

We are not a payday loan provider.

We offer short-term installment loans that are paid back in small chunks over time. We think this is a more realistic way to pay down credit debt. Especially for people who don't have extra cash to spare.

Working on mysteries
without any clues
-Bob Seger

If you have a job, a banking account, and a heartbeat, you can get a payday loan by walking into any of the thousands of payday loan stores in the US. (As a matter of fact, there are more payday loan stores than McDonald's locations).

However, people sometimes ask for loans that they can't pay back. Although it seems counter-intuitive, this is bad for the borrower. If you take out a loan you can't pay back, you just trap yourself further in debt.

Part of offering a better credit product to borrowers is helping them make sure they don't take out loans they can't repay. This process of deciding which loans to give, and how much to lend, is called "underwriting".

The current state of the art in underwriting uses a simple math function across a few variables purchased from a data provider (like a credit bureau). If an applicant is missing some of the data, or has a bad score on some of the variables, that person can't get a loan.

And ends up at a payday loan shop.

As it stands today, good people are being denied credit because old world processes don't take advantage of today's data-rich environment.

We are using a fundamentally different underwriting method. We think that all data can be credit data. Why use a few bits and bobs when you can use massive amounts of data from the Internet, alternative data sources and, of course, the applicant? Generally, more data yields better decisions.

But it would also be wrong to cast aside the decades of underwriting experience that have gotten the credit market as far as its come to date. Capital One is the best in the world at classic underwriting. My cofounder, Shawn Budde, was the head of Capital One's subprime credit business. He has forgotten more about underwriting than most banks have ever known. It's fun to work with brainiacs.

We are going to use the best of both worlds -- massive data analysis AND classic underwriting -- to make better underwriting decisions. Better underwriting decisions mean more people get loans that fit their situation, giving them the credit they need without trapping them in debt hell.

Something's in the air tonight
The sky's alight with a burning light
You can mark my words
something's about to break
-Mat Kearney

I really meant what I said about brainiacs. The Zesters are a fun crew.

Our general counsel (Laura Gowen) worked on the largest credit-related antitrust suit the US has ever seen. And volunteered as counsel for death row inmates. And gets super annoyed when I interrupt her. And looks just like Hilary Ware (something only the Google folks can appreciate).

Kasia Chmielinski and Sonya Boralv are both ex-Googlers. They both started their Google careers in headquarters (in Mountain View) and then moved to London. Kasia went to Harvard and studied physics; Sonya went to a school where people mostly study beer bongs...

We are crammed into a little office over a coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard. We argue about music, sit on exercise balls, and have a resident brown dog sleeping on our couch....

If any of this floats your boat, we are hiring brilliant people. Namely engineers, product managers and machine learning types. We'd love to hear from you...

I've been working on ZestCash for a long time now. I think the team has come up with a great product and we're all really excited about it.

I'm sitting at my desk, looking out the window, watching the chaos and the pathos that is Hollywood, and the mystery food that comes from the fast food restaurant across the street.

And I can see the payday loan store down the block.

Here's hoping that fewer people have to walk in there in the future...

The finish you want

2010-06-23T19:16:00.001-07:00

Another year has passed, wind through the candles, cries in the night.

Four years ago, Jeanne Michele Russell died, at 1:30pm Pacific, in her day bed, in the second floor guest room of our house in California.

After she died, we dressed her in the Etro shirt she loved.

The hospice lady put makeup on her.

She didn't look asleep. That's a myth. She looked dead.

I miss you Jeanne.

Images, a song, and a scar

2010-05-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

Came in close, I heard a voice
Standing stretching every nerve
Had to listen had no choice
I did not believe the information
I just had to trust imagination
-- Peter Gabriel

Hello, OtherEnders.

I was cleaning up a couple of old computers lying around my house. A couple of them were Jeanne's machines, from various times -- an old Mac she used to play games and a Windows machine she used for work and other miscellaneous stuff.

I found a few pictures of her. Since I don't have very many, I'm pretty happy to have a few more. But I'm also pretty sad.

Thought you might like to see them...

It's clearly impossible to take a good picture of yourself. I look awful -- what is that stupid facial hair thing? She's smiling her fake smile -- probably saying "oh shut up and smile" to me -- and she's wearing my sunglasses. I don't recognize where this photo was taken... I wonder what we were doing.

Jeanne loved to laugh. You can see that in this picture, of her with two of her team members at Schwab -- she's laughing almost hysterically. That's the JR I try to remember.

Don't be fooled by the radio,
the TV, or the magazines.
They show you photographs
of how your life should be.
They're just someone else's
fantasy.
--Styx

The women of the page

2010-04-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

Stop what you're doing
cause I'm about to ruin
the image and the style
that you're used to
--Digital Underground

Usually I blog from a plane. Not this time! No, I'm not writing from a plane, but rather from a breakfast place. Specifically, from the 101 Cafe in Hollywood. I recommend it if you find yourself in Hollyweird. It's inside a Best Western, has been open forever, and is a good place for people watching.

The service stinks. A lot.

But the food comes quickly -- actually, so quickly that I wonder if it is all precooked… or maybe pre-extruded. But it's still good! There are always loads of tragically hip people having a cup of coffee, in sunglasses, black clothes, and a necklace or two.

// Note: Every generation goes through a "dress for tragedy" phase, and it always makes me laugh… even when I was dressing for it. The black on black on black look, often with eyeliner, is a staple of teenagers and twentysomethings. What is it about being young that makes the world look so insufferably grim? //

Usually you can watch a few celebrities, for varying definitions of "celebrity", while you eat. Today, for example, one of the actors from the TV show "Sons of Anarchy" is at the table next to me. Sadly, he looks not at all like a biker in real life. Nor is he tragically hip. Just a guy in a sweatshirt reading the LA Weekly.

Well, it is, after all, the year of the hoodie…

Doesn't it make you feel better?
-- Nine Inch Nails

Allow me a slight digression. I was watching the Olympics this year, and I saw several advertisements for a drug that treated "bipolar depression". Several questions spring to mind. If bipolar depression is different from unipolar depression, how do the drugs differ? Why is the drug treating bipolar depression, not bipolar mania? Perhaps mania would look too "fun" for the ad, not serious enough?

And what audience was the drug manufacturer hoping to reach during the Olympics? Do people who have "bipolar depression" enjoy short-track ice skating races, vicariously feeling the round-and-round-getting-nowhere as representative of their lives? Or perhaps ski jumping works better, with some odd suicidal connection of jumping off a house?

Really, what are those ads supposed to do? Such silly things keep me up at night. And now, perhaps, will keep you up as well, a bit…

You're a dream for insomniacs,
prize in the Cracker Jacks
All the difference in the world
is just a call away
-Soul Asylum

It's an odd day, here Chez Douglas. April 27th is Jeanne's birthday. She'd be 49. That's today, just in case I get this post lost in editing-Purgatory. I'm headed up to Seattle to give a talk. (And, now, by the way, I am at an airport, though not on a plane. yet.)

JR's birthdays aren't as hard for me as the anniversary of her death. I can't remember what we did for her birthdays, when we were together. I remember the last birthday, very clearly.

I remember the first one as well. It was before we were a couple. She mentioned that she liked a particular type of steak in a joking work conversation. So I sent her a mail-order box of steaks.

I'm hilarious, I am.

Now, it would have been especially funny, except that I forgot to sign the present. So the UPS guy delivered a box of meat from an anonymous admirer.

Might have moved from my goal (charming, quirky, and sweet) straight into creepy. I mean, who sends meat anonymously?

Oh, well. It worked out.

But she didn't let me live down the "anonymous meat" for years.

But I don't remember the middle birthdays. I can't remember what we did when we were both healthy and having fun.

How sad is it that I've lost touch with the real parts of our lives together -- the parts that are day by day, full of love and light. I can only find the painful ones, the cancer, the darkness, the tears.

It seems unfair.

When the first breath of Texas
comes in view
--Indigo Girls

I got trapped at the Austin airport coming home from SXSW this year. A bunch of us had iPhones, and nobody had signal. The AT&T airport network was totally swamped, I guess.

Luckily most people who I talk to regularly had my Google Voice number, so I could text them, listen to their voicemails, etc., over my network connection.

Thus, I was able to feel semi-connected to the outside world. Judging from the expletives emanating from those nearby, that feeling wasn't widely shared.

Way to go, Google Voice team!

I'm a winner, I'm a sinner.
Do you want my autograph?
I'm a loser, what a joker!
I'm playing my jokes upon you,
while there's nothing better to do
--Supertramp

Now, why is it weird, Chez Douglas? (I know, you were wondering…)

I got married a few weeks ago. Yup, SL and I finally did it!

The wedding was lovely, if I do say so myself. I think it's safe for me to say so, since I had quite little to do with making it come together. We got married in our living room. I designed her wedding ring -- I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. My wedding ring is great -- it's simple, beautiful, and comfortable to wear. How perfect is that?

Our friend Christine performed the ceremony, with her fresh-off-the-back-page-of-Rolling-Stone reverend title in hand. We had three songs in the ceremony, all performed by a friend who has multiple Tony awards for her Broadway performances (wild, huh…) SL walked down the aisle (escorted by our Brown dog) to "Amazing Grace". The ceremony was broken in half by "What a wonderful world", and we exited to "How sweet it is to be loved by you". We had readings by SL's dad and The Lawyer. We had a free-form section where SL and I said something to each other -- her's was scripted, mine wasn't, but both were compelling.

Then we had a party at a local bar with a load of our friends -- I was blown away & honored by the people who traveled to come hang out with us. One of the highlights of the party was the 5 foot tall Peacock (statue, not real) that was on top of the wedding cake. Apparently, they had to do structural reinforcement of the cake to keep him from falling over. We named him "Bailey", in honor of a famous defense attorney -- feel free to speculate as to why the name is apropos and why we came up with it!

All in all, a great Saturday.

And the start of many more.

Is it raining?
Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a' blowing?
-- "Charlie and the chocolate factory"

But I still see Jeanne's face in my life. I see a woman who looks like her, or someone who dances in that cute little shimmy she used. I hear a joke she'd have loved, or I see some news story about LSU.

Bits and pieces of her are drifting away from me.

I finally updated an old computer that we shared. I removed her user account -- I'm pretty sure she won't need it anymore.

I don't want her to drift away. I want to resist, to fight, to hang on to every scrap of our life.

But I can't. One of my friends told me that I hold on to JR's memory too tightly.

Although I understand his point, he's wrong.

I find myself grieving both for her loss, and for my loss of memories and artifacts of her.

I wish I could hold her memory more tightly, not less.

He's wrong.

It's one of those I told you long ago
--Elton John

It's an ill wind, blowing no good

2010-04-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

Rings as hollow
as a high school cheer
--Chagall Guevara

Welcome back, my OtherEnders. I was at a cool entrepreneur event in LA (LaunchpadLA) a couple of weeks ago, and was chatting with someone over drinks. In the course of the conversation, he said "Hey, you haven't posted anything on your blog in a while. Whenever I read it, I get this weird sense about the world."

Now, I don't know what that weird sense might be, but he's right, I haven't posted in a long time. I have a few half-written posts in my Dropbox -- my favorite storage tool ever -- and I'm going to try to get them out over the next few days. So, sorry for the flood of Sunsets about to hit your RSS feed. And each of them will be shorter than usual. Keeping them short minimizes my desire to write another paragraph, and add another lyric, and ... keep editing forever.

So, a short post...

The first one is about email. I got a set of questions after my last post (which was about meetings), about how to communicate outside of meetings. So, rather than answer them individually, I'll answer them here. And, since it's my blog, I'll use myself as an example.

Not surprisingly, if you want to reach me, email is the best way. I do have a phone (as you know from my earlier post on Google Voice), but I don't like to talk on the phone. So, if you want me, send an email.

Thus, this post is about email, in general, and, specifically, that which is sent to me.

On topics like this, people vary widely, so this will be very idiosyncratic.

Who's that writin'?
John the Revelator
--classic gospel hymn

// Note: For those of you playing the home game, I can't take credit for the John the Revelator lyric. I picked it up, sadly, from the Sons of Anarchy television show. Great show, cool bikes. And pretty good soundtrack music. I'd like to say I knew this classic from the dusty recesses of my brain. But that would be a lie. Back to work. //

Email, as a general medium, is a quite poor way to hold long conversations. Tools like GMail's threading view -- where the emails are grouped together by topic, automatically -- help by keeping context together.

But real conversations are rich communications -- intonation, physical position, motion, facial expressions, cultural knowledge are all used in our understanding of someone else's speech.

Obviously, on email, most of these things don't translate. For example, your intonation doesn't come across -- so it's hard to figure out which things you're serious about, and which things are asides. And, as we all know, jokes really don't translate well to email.

These limitations make email a terrible way to hold long, involved conversations, especially controversial conversations.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge email user -- even in my current, confused work status, I get hundreds of emails each day -- so I'm not going to suggest we ditch email entirely. And, as a result, I've developed a system for dealing with my mail. I'm not saying it's the perfect way, but if you're trying to reach me, here's the user guide.

First of all, be brief. Don't channel my blog, nor your inner novelist. Be brief. Did I mention be brief? Writing more than a page to tell me what you want to tell me usually means you don't really understand what you're writing. You are probably providing too much detail, not summarizing enough -- and it makes it far more likely that I won't read the entire mail. Rewrite, over and over, until you get to the core message.

This is somewhat akin to the elevator pitch for a company. Brevity helps.

Again, half as long
--A River Runs Through It

Be clear in what you want from me. I talked about being clear in the ask in a previous post, so I won't belabor it here. Any more than I already have, that is.

And use the technology for what it does well. Put your additions/comments/questions inline -- if I ask you a question, give me an answer next to the question. If the answer is next to my question, I don't have to skip around the note finding what I asked, and what you answered, etc. Yes, it's lazy, but it takes me less time to parse an email that uses inline comments… which makes it more likely I'll make it all the way through.

And, while talking about questions, try to ask me yes or no questions when possible. You are going to get an answer far more quickly if I can hit "r" (for respond, you do use GMail keyboard shortcuts, yes?), and type "yes".

I have some fantasy of answering all emails within a day. I don't even come close. But I send off yes/no notes pretty quickly. I will answer your email containing long answers, but it will take longer. And if I really disagree, it will take me a long time -- because I'll want to think about why I disagree.

In general, the longer I take to respond, the more likely that I disagree with whatever you said. Sorry.

However, if you haven't heard from me in a while, send me a reminder. It's ok to nag me, I don't mind. I will feel guilty, but I'll probably stop whatever I was doing to read and respond to your nag.

And I apologize in advance for my overly long slow responses!

It's been a long time comin'
--Crosby, Stills, and Nash

Was it right?

2010-03-07T11:10:00.000-08:00

Black Velvet
if you please
--Alannah Myles

The cover of this week's Businessweek is a story about the author's husband, and his death from cancer over a set of years. The goal of the article is to talk about the different treatments used, and their costs (and who paid them).

That's interesting enough -- and I've posted about similar things related to JR. It's clear that late-stage care is very expensive, and is almost certainly a bad allocation of resources for the system as a whole... and sometimes for the patient too.

But the article reminded me of the many opportunities one has to second guess treatment decisions, or the decisions not made, or... well, everything.

One of the many things I loved and respected about JR was her bravery. She wasn't going to go try strange experimental treatments -- she often said "I'm not going to China to drink herbal tea". She wasn't negative to people who chose that route, it just wasn't for her.

She did try lots of different drugs (including Avastin), when her doctors suggested they were worth a try.

And when it was time to move to Hospice care, she made that decision, and stuck to it. There were a few opportunities for her to have another surgery, or try some other experimental drug. You can't do those things while in Hospice care -- we would have to put her back into the normal medical regime. She turned the opportunities down, because she knew they weren't going to work.

And she wanted to focus on her friends, her family, and me. She wanted to say her goodbyes, hug her dogs, and hold my hand.

She wanted to see a beach again. We did that. She wanted to see Paris. We didn't do that.

Jeanne's death was very expensive -- we spent a great deal more than the author did -- but she didn't feel she was desperately chasing the next drug that would save her. She felt that she did what was right for her, for us.

I still second guess myself, fairly constantly, but I never second guess her.

I follow where my mind goes
--The Psychedelic Furs

Help wanted...

2010-02-28T13:32:00.000-08:00

May good fortune be with you
May your guiding light be strong
--Rod Steward

Hi to all. One of the most common questions I've been asked in the last year is "What are you doing these days?" Normally, when asked, I've been coy, not really answering directly.

And now? I'm going to change that… slightly.

I've founded a startup company. We are in stealth mode, so I'm not going to describe what we're doing here.

For now, I'll just say that we are helping people who are socially and economically disadvantaged. If we can get it right, we can change their world.

And we are hiring. We need…

software engineers with front-end or large systems experience
mathematicians with statistics, modeling, or econometrics experience
people with credit, risk, and fraud expertise
techy product manager types
and other generally smart people.

We are looking both for full-time folks and part-timers (moonlighters welcome!)

We are based in Hollywood, alongside the Walk of Fame, right between the guy dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow and the one dressed up from Avatar. You can't miss us.

If you want to work at a small company, with a great mission, an innovative culture, where your work will have real impact, send me a note (or leave a comment here, I won't publish any of the comments to protect your privacy).

Thanks!

It's a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
--Dead Kennedys

Meetings and interviews, with me, anyway

2010-02-01T16:29:00.000-08:00

As a friend,
as an old enemy
--Nirvana

Hiya Otherenders....

Mark Suster over at Both Sides of the Table inspired me to dig this post out of the dredges of my files. I started writing it a long time ago, when I was still at Google, so please forgive the fact that it's reasonably Google specific.

Also, forgive me for changing the OtherEndofSunset ground rules -- I have begun to talk about work on my blog, against my "never talk about work" rule. However, this is, I think, the first post that is entirely about work; this feels like the right time to point out that I'm apparently changing my rules slightly. I will still overwhelmingly post about personal, humorous things, but I'll add some work topics as well. Today is a totally work post. Hope it's fun anyway!

She moves
in mysterious ways.
--U2

I've spoken at loads of conferences for vendors and startups. I consistently get questions on "how do I reach you to pitch you" or "what should I say to sell to you," etc., or questions like "I want a job at Google, what do I do?"

I have interviewed a lot of job candidates in my career, and had lots of meetings with vendors of one sort or another. Here are my set of principles, first, for meetings, and second, for job interviews. I am trying to be specific, and thus, am in danger of sounding arrogant or snotty. That's not my point, I just want to highlight what works for me.

Note: I'm not a Googler anymore. The world has changed since I was. I still interview, and still take meetings with vendors, but things have changed at the Big G in the sky. These guidelines may be completely irrelevant. Your mileage may vary. Past success is no guarantee of future returns. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. And so forth!

Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
-- The Police

In no particular order, if you are meeting with me…

1) Show up on time. I know, this sounds pretty basic, but you'd be amazed how many folks get it wrong. I allocated time for you, and I'll try to give you all that time and focus on you while I'm doing so. Please do the same for me. At the least, if you're going to be late, let me know -- everyone who meets with me has (at least) my admin's contact info. Don't be afraid to use it!

2) Do some research. My background is easy to find. Look it up. You might want to use an analogy that is close to some company I used to work for. And, in a few cases, that's turned out to be embarrassing for the vendor. One of my personal favorites was a vendor who explained to me how Google's IPO worked. And got it wrong. I didn't buy from them, by the way.

3) Don't pretend to know me if you don't. I know, this is somewhat contrary to principle #2. Just because you know my background doesn't mean you know me. Don't pretend that we've met before, or had coffee, or dinner, or whatever. I have a good memory. If I don't remember, I apologize, but if I do remember, and you pretend to know me, I'm going to start checking my email while you talk.

4) Be professional. Really, I don't want to fist bump with you. I don't care how much you drank last night. I don't care that you know the best club in Vegas. I promise. You're here to sell me something. Just do it. Which leads to…

5) Make your pitch. I'm not expecting that we're meeting to discuss world peace. I'm not going to buy from you just because you mention Best Friends' Animal Society. Just ask me for what you want.

6) … And be clear in what you want. The mark of Douglas Doom: When I say "ok, what's the ask here". That means I don't know what you want. If I think you're smart, I'll listen to the answer, and try to work with you to clarify. If I don't think so, I'm probably out of the meeting in a few minutes to take an urgent phone call. It's ok to ask for money, for me to buy something, for me to invest in you. I might say "no", but I can't say anything if you don't ask.

7) Don't show up in the meeting, and start out with "What are your goals for ?" I have goals -- probably -- but that's not what you're here for. You're here to sell me something. Just tell me what it is, how it works, why it's better. If you engage me, I'll talk about my goals, hopes, dreams, and concerns. But starting there is a pretty bad way to engage me.

I don't wanna work,
I want to bang on the drum all day.
--Todd Rundgren

OK, let's assume you aren't a vendor, but rather are a job applicant. (I've tried to update this after leaving Google, so the verb tenses and conjugations are probably inconsistent. Again, sorry)

1) Do some research on the company. If we are public, go read our last 10k. Do a news search on us, find out what's up at the moment. Try to figure out what's our core business and core technology. If I ask you what Google does for a living, I want you to answer something like "world's best search and advertising company". I probably want you to know that we don't sell placement in organic search, and that we sell ads for most of our revenue. Which forces me to point out that I want you to know what organic search results are. Knowing this stuff at a high level -- not in detail -- shows me that you cared about this interview, which means a lot to me.

2) Listen to the questions carefully. You might even want to repeat back to me your understanding of the questions. I'm partly listening for whether you are listening, because, to me, one of the most important signals of being smart is that you pay attention to others around you. I may like/respect/hire you even if you don't really listen to me, or don't show me you're listening, but it's a higher bar.

3) Don't misrepresent yourself, your skills, your abilities, or your resume. Really. As SL says, regularly ,"Eventually, everyone knows everything". If you start there, and don't try to hide stuff, you're better off with me. I already think pretty well of you, or else I wouldn't be talking to you for an hour or so; there's no reason to materially misrepresent yourself.

4) Don't malign your previous employer. No matter how much you hated your boss, coworkers, clients, office space, whatever, don't complain about them. I might know your boss -- and I may feel differently about your boss than you do! I might have been a consultant to your employer. Who knows, I might like their logo, whatever. The momentary joy of insulting them is just not worth the risk. Now, I prefer people who are honest and balanced. There's probably a reason you're interviewing with me; tell me that. But try to avoid badmouthing others. It's a small world, trust me.

5) Ask me questions. Definitely ask me during the obligatory "do you have questions for me" period. But probably even more than that! I like candidates that ask me questions throughout. I've made some good hires over my life. One of the best hires ever was a engineering manager at Google, who engaged me in a conversation about one of my questions (after answering the question). He asked me if his answer was good, and, if not, what would have been a better one. He seemed genuinely interested in my thought process and in getting better. That person is going to go in search of ways to do better and better over time. A great sign. I hired him as quickly as I could.

6) Don't assume I've read your resume carefully. I have almost certainly read it, but I might have rushed through it, and I might have missed the most important parts. I don't mean to be disrespectful, really I don't, but I might not have read as carefully as I should. Have a 1 minute version of your background. Hit only the high points, the most important ones (and see #4, above!!) Rehearse the version. But don't deliver it like an automaton. Most of us aren't world class actors, we like to engage in conversations not listen to recorded speeches. So, if you have a script memorized, it'll be hard to get your audience engaged. Give yourself a bit of room to be yourself. I might interrupt you to ask a question. Answer it, and then get back on track of your story. But make sure I get the high points, what you want me to know about you.

7) And, last… Get some rest the night before. I know, this seems silly, but it matters. It's hard to think and focus when you're exhausted. If you're going to be terribly jet lagged, try to stock up on sleep, or caffeine, or Diet Coke. But, whenever you can, be rested when I talk to you. You'll do better overall.

I'm sure there are dozens of other things I believe, but that's my short list. I'm sure I'll add things over time, and look forward to talking to you about the list!

Sign, Sign,
everywhere a sign
--Five Man Electrical Band

See you all soon, in a taxi rushing past, with me on my way to try to sell something.

Sunny, Rainy, Cloudy

2010-01-29T10:45:00.000-08:00

It takes you in,
and spits you out
--Peter Murphy

Remarkably enough, I am not on a plane at the moment. I just got off a plane, but am not, in fact, sitting on one now.

I'm in the Bay Area -- it's not raining today, which is nice, but it's much colder than I'm used to. Yes, yes, for those of you in real cold climates, 50 Fahrenheit is not cold. But I'm from LA. It's cold to me.

I'm sitting in a breakfast place, listening to all the deal negotiations around me. I'm always astonished by what people are willing to say publicly. I know the valuation that one of the Sand Hill crowd is offering a small tech company. I know the price of the deal that a hardware company is offering their newest client, and that the client overpaid by a lot.

And here I sit, typing away, talking to you. I guess I, too, am talking in public, but it feels somehow more private.

Ironic, isn't it.

Palms sweat, blackjack
On a Saturday night
--Sheryl Crow

Speaking of irony. I flew Virgin America over the holidays, I can't remember where I was going. The cool thing about Virgin America is that they offer wifi during the flight -- which means that I can work through the entire flight. I know, that sounds like torture (after all, flights were our last bastion of magazine reading), but actually it's very useful for me. I turn on my music -- with my custom earphones that cut 25 decibels of exterior sound making the flight almost silent -- and write.

I don't have one of those security screens on my laptop, so I assume that everyone around me can read what I'm writing. Thus, I don't write very sensitive stuff. But there's loads of work I can do, catch up on, and the like. So, the wifi is really great for me.

At least on the flight I took, Google was sponsoring the wifi. It might have been part of Google's "free wifi for the holidays" thing, I don't know. At any rate, you had to do various things to get access to the wifi.

As part of the process, you had to give an email address. I hate giving email addresses to places I don't want to hear from later, and so many places assume you want to get their spam in the future (and make it difficult -- or more difficult than it should be -- to stop the flow).

I don't want to collect many different email addresses simply to accumulate spam -- I don't want to remember that many user id and password combinations. GMail has a really cool feature that I use often: You can use a "+" in your email address. The stuff after the plus sign is ignored by GMail, so the mail gets sent to the address before the plus sign, but you get the stuff after the plus sign in the mail you receive.

For example, if your email address is "email.me@gmail.com", you can give someone (say, in a comment to OtherEndofSunset.blogspot.com) "email.me+otherend@gmail.com". The mail will go to you at "email.me@gmail.com". However, you can use a filter within your "email.me" account to automatically do something with mails that include the "otherend" tag after the plus. You could filter all mails with "+otherend" into the trash, for example.

I wanted to use a + in my Virgin America email address -- specifically, I wanted to use my-email+VirginAmerica@gmail.com -- so I could filter future Virgin emails into the trash.

However, this email, sponsored by Google, didn't allow the "+" as a valid email address. The code they had to verify the email address failed because a + is not a letter or digit. Apparently, + is not a valid character for an address. But it is. But I couldn't use it. Aargh. More spam.

If you write code to validate email addresses, include the +, please. But you shouldn't write that code, there are loads of modules out there in the wild that you can use to do the validation (and to validate other user input). Use one of them, it's smarter.

And hope that THEY allow the plus sign.

Aargh.

There must be rock
beneath the sand
--Nanci Griffith

Many years ago, I was asked to teach one of those weird cross-disciplinary classes at a liberal arts college. As it turned out, I left before I could actually teach the class, but I was thinking about it the other day.

I have no idea what made me think of it. However, since I did think about it, in my usual dcm-brain-random-walk method, I'm going to write about it here.

The class was targeted at first year college students, and was thematic instead of subject area based. I have always been interested in the overlap between psychology, sociology, and history; the three work together to constrain what we can do, how we can do it, and how we view ourselves.

So, I decided to teach on the theme of "views of self", and talk about how history and society shape our views. The fun part of my classes was always the weird stuff I assigned to read. I assigned medical journal articles to my statistics classes. This follows the AA saying "Everyone is a role model; some people are models of what not to do". Medical journals are rife with bad statistics -- see below for more light and heat on this point. In my software engineering courses, I often assigned Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" to talk about the broader impact of what we build -- and no, I don't like her views on life, I just think we should all read something we hate regularly.

I'm a civil libertarian. I believe you should get to say whatever you want, and I should defend your right to do so. Even when I hate what you say. But I digress.

In this case, I wanted to cast light on how our views of self, within society, developed. I thought it'd be fun to recreate my reading list here.

// Note: I'm now going to write in the past tense, not the past subjunctive tense, even though the class never happened. It's shorter to use the past tense, and much easier to read. It's just not true, sorry about the misleading prose. //

I assigned Plato's Republic (http://tinyurl.com/y9fxp4b): What should a "perfect society" look like. Then, I assigned Brave New World (http://tinyurl.com/y9kbam8): Perfect sometimes stinks.

I assigned Emile (http://tinyurl.com/yc9ys4a): You can learn on your own to be what you want. Then, I assigned Stranger in a Strange Land (http://tinyurl.com/y8vpsvl): Maybe it's not your choice after all.

I assigned The Covenant (http://tinyurl.com/y89b74p): Your history changes your view of what's right. Then, I assigned The Stand (http://tinyurl.com/yejn7p8): Your present changes your view of what will be right.

I assigned A Room of One's Own (http://tinyurl.com/yaer2vc): Society constrains your actions, and political and economic power is key to transcending. Then, I assigned "Women want bread, not the vote" (an essay reprinted lots of places, e.g., http://tinyurl.com/ycpbr7e): Because sometimes economic parity transcends anything else.

I assigned The Communist Manifesto (http://tinyurl.com/yb8crmw): Society is uniquely determined by economics. Then, I assigned Politics and Markets, which sadly seems to be out of print (http://tinyurl.com/y8uaz68): Maybe society and economic structures work together to specify your life.

And finally, I assigned One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (http://tinyurl.com/ya6vmbg): Maybe your view of self doesn't really matter.

If I were offering the class now, I'd include Another Day of Life (http://tinyurl.com/ycnsjc2): Sometimes our view of other societies is fundamentally flawed because of our hidden assumptions. Thanks to Kevin Delaney for telling me about this book -- it's most excellent, I highly recommend it.

Overall, I wanted the class to be hard and interesting. Of course, this weird reading list, now that I look at it, would probably have yielded an awful course. And likely somewhat depressing. I wish I had gotten to teach it, I think it would have been really fun to hear the thoughts and perceptions of a much younger group with a different set of experiences than I had, and a different worldview than mine.

Oh well.

I know you don't owe me,
but I wish you would let me,
ask one favor of you!
--Lynyrd Skynyrd

I'm interviewed in the January Southwest Spirit magazine -- you know, the magazine that gets stuffed into the seats on the plane for each Southwest Airlines flight. The Q&A was around "digital decluttering", which is advertising-speak for "how to organize your digital life". It's based on my book, not surprisingly, mostly on the "Stuff We Love" appendix. Sadly, they didn't include the title of my book. I doubt anyone will look on Amazon for my name as a book reference.

By the time this gets posted, the issue won't be in seat pockets anymore, so I'm not self-advertising.

But I was flying into SJC the other day, while my article was still in the magazine on the plane. The guy across the aisle from me opened his magazine to skim through while we were taxiing. He flipped through the first half of the issue, until he got to my article.

He stopped and read my article very carefully. Although he didn't rip it out, he read it very carefully. I was practically dancing in the aisle (although the seatbelt sign was on, so I'd have gotten in trouble, but you get the idea).

My self-enthusiasm dimmed somewhat when he flipped to a full-page ad about Amish mantlepieces for only $59 and read that ad just as carefully.

Oh well. Maybe other people ripped the article out?

Cause I'm waiting by the phone
Waiting for you to call me up and tell me I'm not alone
--Soul Asylum

I go through phases where I see JR everywhere. I see the little pointed face. I see her shy smile and the way she ducked her head to hide her smile. I see her short blonde hair, and her omnipresent suits (with pants, rarely skirts). I see her wide open, guileless eyes.

I'm in one of those phases now. She was on my flight. She was at the stoplight next to me on Hollywood Boulevard yesterday. She was at my coffee shop/meeting place.

And I have mixed feelings. One the one hand, it's great to "see" her. On the other hand, it feels like someone punched me. Notice no quotes around "punched". There's no imagination, sadly, in that feeling.

These phases aren't correlated with SL traveling, but they are worse when she's not around. I come home and tell her about it, and how I'm feeling. She listens patiently, smiles at me, and gives me a hug. Before Minnie died, she used to climb up in my lap, as if she knew I was sad.

But Minnie is gone too, and I'm traveling. So the feeling is more of the punch type than the great one. But it's still somewhat comforting, and I try to focus on that.

Haiti,
mon amour
--JayZ, Rihanna, Bono, the Edge, and a stage full of others

I was going to write a long passage on a mind-numbing example of bad math inferencing, and/or terrible reporting (here: http://tinyurl.com/yekrkfx), but Cory Ondrejka already did a good job of it. So, I'll write a shorter annoyed piece.

Basically, the core work was a study of the schools that entrepreneurs attended. The study examined a common perception (in tech companies, at least) that the best entrepreneurs all came from top tier schools -- the Ivy League, Stanford, IIT, etc. The study carefully analyzed startups, identifying 287 schools in the sample. Clearly, there are more schools represented than simply the top 10.

Which isn't a terrible surprise, given geographical impact on school attendance, and the fact that (in general), the top few percent of students at almost any school are competitive with the students in the "best schools". In other words, the very best students at a bad university might have succeeded at places like Stanford, but didn't attend such schools, for a variety of reasons. (There's data on this, although there are lots of reasons why the data is messy.)

Now, opinions may vary, but I'm reasonably smart. I attended the University of Tulsa, and wasn't at the top of my class there. In a blatant example of the representativeness heuristic, I think that I'm an example of strong students at bad universities. SL attended Washington State, which is best known for making the Playboy best party school list year after year. The Lawyer went to the University of Florida; enough said there…

OK, ignoring that side trip I just took us on, back to the core research. The top-line summary of the research was that the school you attended didn't matter in making a startup -- look, there were 287 schools represented!

But that's wrong. Let's review...

The paper found that the top 10 schools accounted for "only" 19% of all startups. Hmm, let's think that through. There were 287 schools in the sample. So, 277 schools amounted for 81% of all startups (100% - 19%). This is massive over-indexing of the top 10 schools -- there are more startups from the top 10 than there "should be" if there's no difference between schools.

So, doing the math, if the top 10 schools amounted to 19%, then each top 10 school accounted for 1.9% of all startups.

And if the remaining 277 schools accounted for the remaining 81% of schools, each of those schools provided about 0.3% of startups.

Thus, each top 10 school amounted for roughly 6 times as many startups as each of the remaining schools.

That's a huge difference.

It doesn't say that all startups are from top tier schools, but it's clearly a leg up for some reason. You may argue why it happens -- surrounding industries, applied research by professors, technology transfer departments, higher student caliber on average, or any of a thousand other reasons -- but there are numerical advantages to being a top tier school.

But I've done reasonably well for myself, and I didn't attend a top tier school as an undergraduate.

// But I did attend Princeton for my Ph.D., so maybe I don't count. The Lawyer went to Boalt Hall law school at UC Berkeley. Whatever. SL is still an example of a huge success from a state school. //

The findings were interesting, the research was a great question, and the lack of statistical understanding represented by the article (and the coverage) is maddening. Really, folks, take some introductory math and dig into the numbers at least a little bit.

Thoughts meander like a
restless wind inside a letter box
--The Beatles

Semiformal dinner, by candlelight

2010-01-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

She make a man
want to speak Spanish
--Shakira

Well, hello, my dear OtherEnders. I'm, as usual, on a plane. But this time it's a long flight -- southeast Asia back to LAX. We are riding the jet stream home. The upside? The flight is really short. The downside? The flight is really bumpy.

Bleech. I hate turbulence. I wonder if anyone doesn't hate it? Or is it just "hate less"? I wonder if pilots are even immune to the yuck factor? I bet it's better when they are flying, rather than being a passenger -- like how you don't get carsick if you are driving?

By the way, I can't find a verb that shortens "being a passenger" -- I need a gerund. Like "passengering" But I don't have one.

The guy in the seat one in front, and one to the right of me is really scared. He's grabbing his seat and closing his eyes so tightly that you can see the lines in his forehead. He just asked me if everything is ok -- you have to be pretty scared to ask another passenger if everything is ok.

I feel badly for him. It stinks to be afraid. I told him that we are ok, and to turn on some music to distract himself. He grabbed his bag, desperately, the whites of his eyes showing, and pulled out his headphones and music player. He seems a bit calmer now.

However, I wish the flipping turbulence would stop. It's getting really annoying…

I remember when I lost my mind
--Gnarls Barkley

I've spent a lot of time in the San Jose (California) airport lately, with a large proportion of it spent waiting for the rental car shuttle. You pick up your rental car at a parking lot that is a mile (or so) away from the terminals where you disembark your plane. There's a bus that makes the rounds of the terminals, picking up passengers and dropping them off at the rental car lot. It's a loop, from car rental lot, to the first terminal, then the second, and then back to the lot. Arriving and departing passengers are mixed in the bus, so you don't have to make sure you're on the right bus -- just grab whatever you see.

The lot is only about 10 minutes' drive from the terminal. You'd think it'd be fast and easy to get out.

It's not.

The last time I got a car at San Jose, it took 50 minutes to fly from Burbank to SJC. It took 40 to get to my car after arriving at the rental bus stop outside my terminal.

The shuttles run fairly infrequently, and there are a couple of them in route at any point. Which should speed things up, right? However, when a shuttle reaches a stop, it waits for the next shuttle -- the one behind it -- to get to the stop before proceeding onwards.

This has the effect of clumping the buses together at the stops, and ensuring that the wait for each shuttle is a function of the rate of all other buses.

Basically, instead of running in sequence, at the same rate, at opposite points on the curve connecting lot and terminals, the buses run more or less together.

I'm reasonably sure this more or less maximizes the expected length of all shuttle rides. And I'm quite sure it's at least as annoying as this turbulence.

You're out there running
just to be on the run
--Nanci Griffith

It's strange, the things that remind you of a memory. For any of you that have been reading OtherEnd for a while, you know that I am often trapped by my memories. Held hostage, like a squid in a dryer, to the guilt and sadness and loss that accompanied my life since JR died.

Unlike said squid, I have a huge amount of happiness as well -- I have SL, great friends, a great dog, nice house, and a generally positive outlook on life. But I am sucked back into the morass fairly regularly.

Often by surprising things. Things you wouldn't expect -- or, at least, things I wouldn't expect.

I'm Mr.Blue
(…)
And no matter what you do
When you're lonely,
I'll be lonely too
--Yaz

Have you ever noticed the look that people get when they are talking about something painful? You can see it on the faces of people on the phone, even in a crowd, from a distance. Pay attention next time, you'll be able to describe what you see.

There's a pinched look on the face, a slight squint against the light cast by the tragedy, a hesitancy of the mouth to form the words that one's soul abhors.

I saw that look this weekend, on a new acquaintance. You can spot it a mile away. It's always the same, and always pulls a chord of sadness in me. I remember the phone call in the Phoenix airport when she told me she had cancer. I remember the call on Wednesday, when she couldn't hold the phone to her ear, and so I told her mom to put on the headset and put the headset on her, so I could hear her voice, and she could hear mine. I remember her fragile voice when she told me she loved me, for the last time.

As I write these words, my face pulls into a familiar pattern. You've probably seen it on me, as well.

I'm also reminded of things around that time and losses thereafter as well. I saw a woman wearing her wedding ring on her right hand. I lost a friend once who wore her rings that way… and ultimately wore one of JR's rings that way. Sad, in a bittersweet, slightly twisted way. Not the same pinched look, but a slightly sarcastic one, with a hint of anger tinging the loss. There are, I believe, lots of ways to lose a friend, and many words for that feeling. Ask any linguist. They'll tell you. Trust me.

You sound like a Mountain Dew ad
--SL to me

Well, ok, I was drinking a glass of ice water -- heavy on the ice, light on the water -- and it was cold against my teeth. Hence the sighing and general verbal exhalations. Which did, indeed, make me sound like some bad 80's ad on television. That's why I don't like ice in my water -- because I don't want to sound like a tool.

Thanks, SL, for reminding me.

Things get damaged
things get broken
--Depeche Mode

I spent some time this weekend watching a smart machine wipe out a smart person. And thought about machines, their performance, and the edges of safety.

If you want to make something really high performance, you have to make it somewhat unsafe, run it at the very edge of its envelope for operation. If you want to ski quickly, you have to stay on the edges of the ski, almost never on the bottom.

If you want to win a Formula One race, you need to keep the car at 9 out of 10 speed, where 10 is flying helplessly off the track, a passenger in your own car. You also need to be about 5 feet tall and thin, but that's not relevant to my point here; really, do focus here, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Modern fighter jets are meta-unstable, which means that without computer and human control, they wouldn't fly, they'd crash. Their "normal mode" is unstable.

If you have to make a machine slightly unsafe to make it perform as well as you want, how do you protect the users? Do you limit the operating range of the device, in order to keep people from hurting themselves?

Sounds like a good goal, except limiting the operating range is keeping the ski on its bottom, not the edge. You are giving up part of the reason you built the machine in the first place. Thus, limiting the operating range works against your goals.

So, maybe you build a machine where you can hurt yourself -- crash the plane, wreck the car, wipe out on your skis -- but rely on training to keep people generally on track. You make pilots understand how to respond to a problem, or how to prevent one in the first place.

But training is tough -- ask any cognitive scientist (other than me, I don't count right now).

Relying on training to protect people from their machines is risky. The history of after-action reports is replete with examples of people -- trained people -- who ignored their training, did the wrong stuff, and people died.

People are fairly cruddy learners. If you teach them, and study what happens, it's quite remarkable, and disappointing. People don't learn the lessons in front of them -- they learn some other lesson, semi-connected to your point. If they learn your point, they can't apply it in other situations. And if you don't pay attention, they just forget what you taught them.

Now, the accident I saw this weekend did not involve death, dismemberment, or general destruction. It yielded bruises, a very sore leg, and a rueful laugh. It occurred because the woman who got hurt -- the hurtee? -- leaned back as the machine bore down on her, instead of leaning forward. However, leaning back yielded a crash. Much like leaning back on skis. But it's nearly impossible not to lean backward when something is bearing down on you -- your whole being screams to run away.

The control structure was (more or less) a joystick. Point it in the direction you want to go. Pushing farther in that direction makes you go faster. In this case, her leaning back accelerated the machine down a hill, towards her.

This makes little to no sense. When she leaned back, she pulled the control surface -- the joystick, if you will -- toward her, down the hill, as if the driver had accelerated sharply down the hill. But the angle she pulled the stick to was quite extreme -- there's no way a real driver could have pushed the control that far forward.

It had to be a mistake -- it couldn't be real control input. The machine masterfully interprets little tiny control inputs -- move your feet an inch or so, you get an output response. So why didn't the smart machine ignore this clearly incorrect input? Basically, why didn't the machine glide to a stop rather than accept that input? The worst case of ignoring it would be to cause someone to stop on a downhill when they were trying to accelerate very quickly; roll to a stop, if, that is, the driver could arrange to get the joystick into that position.

But the machine accepted the input, and drove over her. I think that in toy-like things, such as this overhyped scooter, it's probably smarter to trade off some of the performance envelope in favor of a bit of protection from natural errors.

But then again, I'm willing to trade off performance for safety. I don't drive a car more than about a 7 out of 10, I ski so slowly that a toddler with untied shoes can outstrip me, and I'm afraid of turbulence, so what would I know?

This old town
should have burned down
in 1931
when the rain
refused to come
--Nanci Griffith

I finished recording the audio version of my book a couple of weeks ago. It took two full days, closeted in a small, dark room. The room's walls were covered in sound-absorbing baffles, adding to the dark feeling of the room. There was a window in front of me, casting a soft light. I sat on a chair, with a music stand in front of me, and a mic staring me full in the face. On the music stand was a printout of my book -- in larger-than-usual fonts, I'm glad to say.

I sat in the chair until my butt was numb, reading until I was totally tired of the sound of my own voice. And, for those of you who know me, you know I have an almost infinite love of hearing my own voice. Clearly, a long recording session.

Sean, my director, was infinitely patient. I went into the process with absolutely no idea what a director did in the studio. As it turns out, he kept the recording machinery going -- we recorded onto a mac, running Pro Tools, I believe. The main data flowed directly onto a hard drive; a CD served as a backup for the melodious tones. Sean sat outside, his face and shoulder visible through the window, a ready smile and a quick wit.

I read the entire book aloud into the microphone. Even though it's my book, I wasn't allowed to reword it, I just had to read whatever was on the page. Even when my prose stank, I had to read it verbatim. Any time you want to hate your own prose, read it out loud. Trust me, you'll hate it.

Anyway, Sean would notice every time I got a word wrong, and he'd jump in. I often caught myself, but found myself hoping he hadn't noticed. But he had.

It turns out there are words I don't say well. I can't say the word "statistics". I can't count the number of times I stumbled on it. Apparently, "contexts" also escape me -- I got that one wrong in loads of different parts of the book. Ironically, I can't say "San Francisco"; my heart just wasn't in it.

But, with a great director, and, apparently, a great editor (from Michigan, I think, I never met him), the recording is done. One more step on the road to the book hitting the streets.

One of the things Sean told me was that I reminded him of a cross between Henry Rollins and Ron Howard. Does that make me Opie without a neck? Or Black Flag with a small-town accent? I have no idea. But he meant it as a compliment...

We like to watch you laughing
(…)
No time to think of consequences
--MGMT

I started writing this post, in my head, while lying next to a pool, with SL next to me, reading a wedding magazine. Yes, it's getting close to that time. Military planes, jets, and helicopters swarmed around all morning, clearly on training missions. They flew in different formations, on different headings, at different altitudes. I watched them, SL blissfully ignored them, visions of sugar plums and ceremonies in her head.

It's hard to localize the sound of a jet from a distance. The noise echoes all over the place, directionless and yet all encompassing. Disembodied. Timeless. The echoes confuse your ability to find the plane; the clouds mask its progress. You're surrounded by evidence of its existence, yet there's nothing to show of it.

I am not asking any single person to give a formal (traditional, written) toast at the wedding reception. I asked someone to give me a toast, long ago; not going to happen, that one. The lack of sound echoes, like the jet roar of a plane on the horizon, leaving only a contrail to mark its passage.

Sometimes things sneak up on you, suddenly appearing to your right, although you could swear you heard them behind and to the left. So, I am waiting to see if something appears; should I pass the "role" of toasts out amongst the attendees? Should I toast ourselves?

And, no, I don't mean being covered in butter -- really? was that your best idea?

Regardless of the toasts, I'll be standing next to SL. And a surround of love, grace, forgiveness, acceptance, and understanding.

And what more could one person ask for?

No this ain't over,
not here,
not while I still
need you around
--Matchbox 20

We can be like they are

2009-12-13T10:13:00.000-08:00

And lovers war with arrows over
Secrets they could tell
--Duran Duran

It's been another several flights for me since my last posting. I often fly out of the Burbank airport (also known as Bob Hope Airport). It's small -- I think it has only about 20 gates -- and is easy to get in and out of. However, the roads that are inside the airport (for pickup, drop off, and parking) are tiny and crowded.

The folks who run the airport have thought through many of the things that slow you down, including the tiny-road-generated traffic. My favorite trick they do is to provide "valet parking". Basically, instead of pulling into the parking structure and driving around looking for a parking space -- thereby creating traffic and losing loads of time -- you pull around into a valet line. The valet line looks for all the world like a rental car return area: There are several lanes that you pull forward into, and some employee walks over to take your keys, gives you a tag for your car, and sends you on your way.

It usually takes about 5 minutes. And it's the same price as the parking structure. It clears traffic and saves you loads of time. Great idea for all parties involved.

When you land, you call a toll free phone number, key in the number from the tag, and they bring your car out. It usually takes about 10 minutes to get your car out. If you are checking baggage, you pick up your bags on the way to the parking area and the car beats you out there handily. If you are carrying on, you have time to stop for a restroom break before walking out, and your car is waiting for you. There are payment machines all around the exit, so you can prepay your parking fee without waiting in line for a payment window. If you prepay, you show your receipt to the valet, who gives you your keys and you scoot off.

It usually takes me about 20 minutes from when the wheels touch down on the runway to being out of the airport, on the road home. I love getting in and out that quickly. It's a great example of rethinking -- and removing -- the way institutions usually constrain us. Traffic and frustration getting your car into the airport doesn't have to happen, but it usually does.

A tip of the hat to the Burbank airport management.

Towels on oven doors
do not freeze.
--Nanci Griffith

SL is doing some consulting now, for a few different clients. Accordingly, we decided to get her a better email domain (in Google Apps) and a Google Voice number for her business.

She's a smart lady, and is comfortable with her technology. But she was pretty freaked out about these changes. And, if you walk through how to create and configure the tools, it sort of makes sense why.

I'm a huge Google Apps fan -- I mean, I just finished a book lauding them in the context of getting yourself more organized (and less stressed as a result). But they aren't perfect, and today's chat is about the lack of perfection.

I still would not trade them, in case you are wondering!

Let's do a Google Apps creation first. You find the Apps home page (which I always find through search, but I think it might be something creative like google.com/apps.). On that page, it's easy to find the premium edition, which provides a lot of functionality for $50 per seat -- very cheap compared to other solutions for business use.

However, we just needed the free version -- she only needs a couple of email addresses, and doesn't need the support you get with the premium version. I mean, whatever else you can say about me, I'm still reasonably good tech support.

It's not obvious where to find the free version. This is atypical for Google products -- usually the interfaces are simple and well thought-out. In this case, that doesn't seem to be true. I had to scan the page a couple of times to find the correct link (which is on the right hand side of the page). Again, this is as good as the competition's creation process… but Google should be better, not as good.

Note to the Apps UI design team -- simplified would be better, for me at least.

Once I found the link, I went in to select a domain name. This part is easy, and SL's name is unique enough that the domain was available. After selecting the domain, you have to pay for it, which isn't surprising. And, as they should, Google uses Checkout to make this payment. All simple so far.

Then you go to the control panel for your domain -- which is off of some random looking URL, but can be found by going to your domain name with no arguments -- to set up your services.

You're faced with a screen full of products, with semi-random text under each one. If you know what you are doing, this isn't terribly surprising. The most surprising thing to me was how long it took to apply my Checkout payment to SL's domain so that I could configure it. This is my third Apps domain to set up, so I feel comfortable doing this. However, the flow to do it is not clear at all -- there are a variety of places to set options, and it's not clear to me why each option is off of that particular menu, and the like.

This wasn't trivial, and this isn't the first time I've done it.

In this case, I eventually had a domain with mail and calendar and docs for SL, and was ready to get her set up. I created an account for her, in the format she likes, and told her to log on and change her password. She did so, but then asked if she had to close her personal GMail account to have her work email open? (You can't have two personal GMail accounts open at the same time). If she did, she wanted to use filters to merge both emails into one screen. This is not a bad idea, but she gets loads of personal email, so I thought her work email would be buried, even with a filter to flag them. However, you don't have to close your personal GMail if you have your Apps domain open -- they don't conflict, even though they both are flagged on the Firefox tabs as "GMail". OK, once she got over that concern, and I told her how to reach her email (mail.domainname.com), she was ready to start using that address for her work.

Her first step was to set up filters pushing her work mail out of her personal GMail, so people who were sending work-related emails to her personal account would start seeing the work domain, and gradually update their mail cache to get the right address. And, voila, she has a new mail domain and address for her work.

It probably took me 45 minutes to get this all done. I couldn't set up an Exchange domain in that time, but I'd rather it took me less time.

And like some angel's haloed brow
You reek of purity.
I see your armor plated breast
Has long since lost it's sheen.
--Procol Harum

But now things got complicated. Google Voice is hard to configure. It's a really good product, but is complex. SL will use her Google Voice number for her business cards -- her clients will know one phone number, and the GVoice system will stalk her across whatever actual number makes sense. This is particularly cool since we have almost no cell reception at our house, so having her number ring both her cell and her home office increases the chances that the caller will find her. Very cool product.

But very complicated.

It's still in limited beta, so I had sent her an invitation from my Voice account. She found the invitation in her mail, and clicked on it. You get two options -- pick a word to get the numbers or pick some numbers to find an open number. We tried a variety of things, and finally found an open number -- lots of the numbers appear to be taken. Then we added her phone numbers and activated them, which involved lots of clicks, calls, codes entered into phones, etc. By the time this process was finished, SL was frantic -- "How am I ever going to remember this?"

And then, of course, things got harder. She had to specify which numbers to ring when her GVoice number got called. Should it ring to her home office number? Her cell phone? Both? I use both, and she ultimately decided to do so as well. We both use iPhones, which are usually great, but are a really bad user experience with GVoice.

When I get a call to my GVoice number, both my home office number and my cell phone ring. If I pick it up from my home office number, I am left with a 2 second voicemail on my cell, because it doesn't realize that the call wasn't "real". So, I get dozens of fake voicemails each day. Manageable, but VERY annoying.

There's a cool feature in GVoice that has your caller identify themselves so you can decide whether to take the call or let it go to voice mail. You answer the phone, the system tells you who is calling, and you can decided whether to take the call (by pressing "1") or send it to voicemail (by pressing "2"). Nice. But I use a Bluetooth speakerphone when I'm driving. If I get a GVoice call, I have to dig my phone out, show the keypad, and type a "1" to accept the call. This is both dangerous and a bit silly -- an option to SAY "one" would be a huge improvement. I got a ticket a couple of weeks ago keying in the "1" -- can I take it off my taxes as a business expense?

If someone leaves me a voicemail on my GVoice voicemail, I get an email and text notification that there's a voicemail. GVoice also tries to turn the speech into text which I can read on my phone or at a web browser. This is a really nice feature, and the speech-to-text conversion is really good.

Texting from GVoice is really cool, by the way, since I can send the text from my computer and all the responses, etc., are stored there in a GMail-like thread. Really great feature. However, if someone responds to my text, it comes from a seemingly random -- but unique -- phone number. To get a notification of who sent the text, you need to add it to two different contact lists. First, the number needs to get added to your Google contact manager. This isn't hard, but doesn't add a lot of value to me, either. Then, I have to add the random number to the appropriate contact on my iPhone, so it shows up from the right person in my text or voicemail screens. This means that I have loads of numbers for various people -- I think I have 5 stored for CO, for example. Again, annoying but not awful. And there are various failure conditions -- such as when SL created her GVoice number, I now sometimes see two different SL text streams, even though there's only one, really.

You can't set options for GVoice on a number by number basis. You can set some options for a group of numbers -- such as which outbound message to play, or which numbers to call -- but you can't set a do not disturb option for a subset of your numbers, nor can you set a specific number to skip caller identification. So, for example, I get loads of calls from SL and CO. I'd rather have neither of them need to announce themselves, but I can't figure out how to set that as an option.

SL is a smart lady -- very, very smart -- but explaining all this was really hard, and, at the end, she was almost in tears, wishing I had never pushed her this way. Partly, this is presumably due to the bad iPhone and GVoice interactions making the whole system harder to understand, I guess. .

GVoice is hard to setup. Again, it would be cool if the Google UI gods could attack GVoice, and make it into the off-the-charts spectacular tool it can be.

There's a joke and I know it very well.
It's one of those I told you long ago.
--Elton John

The last three times I've gone through security at the Burbank airport, I've been called aside for additional pat-down screening because I was wearing a sweatshirt or (today) a long sleeve T-shirt. Basically, I pass through the metal detector and then am patted down by hand, usually by the TSA person standing behind the X-ray machine. Leaving aside the fact that this blocks the X-ray machine, thereby slowing everyone down behind me, there's the fact that this is silly.

Apparently the TSA thinks that there is a possible danger from something I could have hidden under my shirt that would not set off the X-ray alarm. I can't figure out what that possible threat could be -- and believe me, I'm good at thinking of the worst possible case for just about everything. I have some half-baked ideas -- maybe plastic explosives wrapped around my chest, with someone else bringing the detonator and the electrical wires, perhaps? Then the two people could assemble a bomb while in the air on a plane, I guess.

However, in that case, the partner has to get a detonator and wires (with a bunch of logic circuits) through the screening so that the parts are available in the air.

Maybe it's just me, but I really want to believe that the Xray machine and screeners are going to notice a pretty large battery, wires, and the associated stuff to make plastic explosive dangerous. Also, I'd like to think passengers would notice someone passing wires around and sticking det-cord into some block of plastic.

Or maybe the threat is more prosaic -- dynamite or black powder-based explosives. I guess they would pass the Xray screen, right? However, according to the tests that Mythbusters did, it would take a lot of explosive to actually damage a plane materially. Not sure that much could fit under my T-shirt, but I'm not an expert.

It's clear, though, that the shoe bomb potential damage and the hypothetical liquid bomb are largely FUD.

I wonder if there's a way to make airport security useful without the silly parts? I believe that El Al uses mostly highly trained investigators to look at passengers, noticing the physical signs of fear, excitement, and the like -- this would, I should think, identify most terrorists and criminals.

But we, instead, use Xray machines and screeners, despite loads of evidence that they aren't terribly effective.

By the way, I forgot to pull my toothpaste out of my laptop bag… and it went through the screen just fine. So maybe I'm wrong about the screening effectiveness.

'Cause there are no reasons
--Bob Geldof & The Boomtown Rats

It's been more than 3 years since JR died. Minnie's passing brought it all back, in a flood of painful memories, stepping out into a nest of red ants without shoes, knowing that there's no way to go around it.

It doesn't matter how much you prepare, the ants still win.

I wish so many things had been different between JR and I. The flood of memories fills me with shame, sadness, and dread. Shame for what I did, or failed to do, or what weird priorities I set while she was ill. Sadness for the decisions I made that cost me time with JR, simply to protect the feelings of others, who definitely should not have been even remotely as important to me as she was. Dread because I will spend the rest of my life beating myself for my choices and I can't fix them; I can't seem to find a way to heal.

I wish I had given Minnie more treats, let her eat my books or shoes as she wished, and not yelled at her for climbing up on the table next to the grill and eating the food I was going to grill for a pool party we had this summer. I'm glad I spent the last few days lying in bed with Minnie, giving her the food she wanted, the treats she would eat, and being very careful carrying her and moving her. I'm glad SL tucked Minnie in just as she has done every night since first coming into our lives, for the last time, right before we put Minnie to sleep. I'm glad Minnie's last breath was taken as she lay in my lap, and she wasn't scared.

And I wish Brown didn't have to be terrified every time we leave the house, because he's not sure if we are coming back. After all, his sister never came back.

The morning sun
when it's in your face
really shows your age.
But that don't worry me none
in my eyes you're everything.
--Rod Stewart

I have a photo of JR on my wall in my office. Thankfully, SL is completely understanding of this, and of my grief. I wish I had more photos of JR, more videos of her playing with the dogs, more images of her infectious smile, more memories of playing miniature golf, or her laugh when we were driving in the car too fast, or her frustration while learning to ski, or … well, just about anything. I put all the notes and letters she sent me in a plastic box in my safe. I only needed one piece of Tupperware to hold everything I can touch of her. That's pathetic. There was so little time, and I wasted it. What would I give for one less business trip, and one more letter.

There's a reason I do overnight business trips, even to places like the UK. I want to be home with SL. I wish I had known that years ago.

And I wish I had shoes, so the ants wouldn't hurt as badly. But I think I shall be shoeless forever.

Well I've searched and I've searched
To find the perfect life-
(….)
But wherever I have gone
I was sure to find myself there.
You can run all your life
But not go anywhere
--Social Distortion

There's magic in the night

2009-11-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

Like the one you knew before
calling me back once again
-- Screaming Trees

I hate cancer.

My beloved Dalmatian, Minnie, died last Friday. She had a brain tumor, inoperable brain cancer.

In a period of about 2 months, she went from perfectly normal… to dead.

In an eerily reminiscent state, the drugs she took made her stomach terribly upset, and almost killed her. Sound familiar?

The last week or so, she wasn't really able to walk. Her right side paws would collapse under her. She was scared of the stairs, and would walk in circles -- to the left -- if we didn't call her. I clapped to get her attention and keep her in a straight line.

But she still wagged when she saw me. She was lying on her bed, mostly unable to move, but she wagged her tail when I came home.

I don't know what would be more tragic: Her wagging, or her not wagging.

She made a great showing at SL's birthday party -- she walked well, stole food, kissed people, and was generally similar to the Minnie I had known for years.

That was her last, final performance.

We put her to sleep, to ease her pain. The last two days I spent lying in our bed, with Minnie lying next to me. She could stretch ut that way, and was warm. She loved being cuddled. If I moved away, she would open her eyes and look at me. I didn't stay away much.

She was lying across my lap, in that same bed, as she breathed her last breath. I was talking to her, telling her we loved her, and that her brother would be ok, and that we'd miss her.

Sound familiar?

I hate cancer.

She finally looked at me in love,
and she was gone.
--Crosby, Stills, and Nash

At the end, I felt a presence I knew well. I felt a calm, welcoming spirit come for Minnie.

I believe Flanny and JR came back, to help Minnie move on.

Once there was a darkness,
deep and endless night.
You gave me everything you had,
you gave me light.
--Sarah McLachlan

Our brown dog is pretty tweaked. He can't figure out where Minnie went. And he's afraid that SL or I will be gone next.

He's always been a herder, but now he's nearly frenetic about it, running back and forth between us on rapid patrol.

We are trying to tell him we love him, and he's safe, but he's right, the pack has changed, and nobody told him how, or why. I can't explain it to him, but I like it that he's much more cuddly.

I just wish it were for a less tragic reason.

One more chance to make it real,
to trade in these wings for some wheels
-- Bruce Springsteen

There are two kinds of motorcyclists, the saying goes.

You are a motorcyclist that has either gone down, or is going down.

For those of you who don't pay attention to such motorcycle cultural icons like "Sons of Anarchy" or the like, to put a bike down is to crash.

Not the same as putting a dog down.

Thus, the saying indicates that all motorcyclists either have crashed, or are going to crash in the future, probably soon.

I was proud to be solidly in the second category -- the "will go down" camp. As always, I overestimated my control of my environment. This is a bad habit on a motorcycle.

Because you are only partly in control.

Last weekend, I joined the first category -- I put my bike down. I crashed the Saxon, which is rich with irony -- it didn't break down, I broke it. Seems fitting somehow.

I was coming down a freeway offramp, into a left turn. As I came down the ramp, my instincts started screaming "Danger!" I didn't know what was wrong, and so I ignored them.

Pesky instincts.

As I turned left off of the ramp, the front corner of the frame dug into the pavement.

If the front of a bike is pulled down (and, by extension, back), the back of the bike has to come up to balance the movement. Pesky physics.

So, in this case, my rear wheel left the pavement, and I went sliding across the road into the curb. I've never seen my riding partner move faster than as he was sprinting across the road to get to me.

Rather warming, actually.

I was wearing a helmet (of course!!!), a heavy leather jacket with armor, motorcycle boots, and kevlar pants.

Wear your gear, boys and girls. Don't be a dummy.

My jacket is scratched up. My helmet doesn't seem to have a mark on it. My pants were a bit scraped, but not too badly. My boots are reasonably worked.

But I'm totally fine. I have a bruise on my knee, and I wrenched my shoulder trying to pull the bike off of me, but I'm fine.

And amazingly lucky.

I called SL, and started the conversation with "I'm totally fine." My mother taught me that -- always open with the fact that I'm fine.

It didn't appear to work for SL. She screamed -- literally -- asking what happened. She was with my riding partner's wife. The wife screamed. I heard all this over the phone, from the cab of the flatbed towing the bike home.

Suddenly I was running a haunted house, in November. Like wearing white after Labor Day, it's just not done.

I scratched up the bike, and broke one of the welds holding the frame together. The bike is totally rideable, except that the shift linkage is a bit bent.

I went on the ride to clear my head, to spend some time alone with my sadness from Minnie and my overwhelming hatred of cancer.

My pal went with me, to keep me company -- and, I suspect, to keep an eye on me. (Although he never said so…).

I cleared my mind, I guess… by being an idiot and ignoring my instincts. Both SL and JR always told me to trust my gut, that I had good instincts that would not lead me astray. In a matter of months, I have talked myself into a job (even though everything in my body told me no) and into crashing a bike that I love.

They were right. I need to pay better attention.

Really, I'm fine. Thanks for asking.

Smoke from the chimneys
meets its maker in the sky
-- Indigo Girls

If you ever have to handle what they lovingly call "remains" of a person or a pet, let me warn you about one thing.

You are used to postural muscles. You don't expect the head to flap around like a weight on the end of a rope.

But bodies don't have postural muscles.

Just breathe in, let the horror pass, and then kiss whoever you lost.

Give me a sense of wonder
--Iron Maiden

I'm writing this on a plane, what a shock. The man next to me has a sheaf of papers (from a Holiday Inn, I think) with a series of lines written on it. Each line is a date, a symbol, a time, and a 6 letter string.

Hmm.

This guy has a list of dates, plane types, and tail numbers.

I really want my plane to land, and to get away from him. I'm sure it's fine… but I've never seen the like.

You've got it all in the palm of your hand,
but your hand's wet with sweat.
-- Styx

I saw a great movie last weekend, Pirate Radio (was released in some parts of the world as "The Boat the Rocked").

Go see it.

It's a love story to music and to the people who built the rock and roll culture. It was a love song to everything I love. I almost wanted to cry.

I so much wanted that to be my story, but it wasn't. I failed in my quest. But, like the Knights of Yore, I have not given up on my belief in the mystic.

Go see the movie, and be grateful to those who went before, and who create the art that lights our hearts, and our radios, and our skies.

Fail to see the anguish in my eyes
--- Marilyn Manson

For many years, I heard music all the time. I walked through a world full of art. No matter where I was, the music was with me, like a lover.

I was never alone, because Mary-Chapin, Bruce, Hilary, Bob, Johnny, or hundreds of other artists were always with me.

I used to sing along to the music that filled my head, all the time. This normally just led to odd looks from those around me -- so I tried to learn to sing to myself.

But sometimes it affected those around me.

I was driving home with the Lovely Italian in one of our early dates, and I forgot to sing to myself. I sung the line "I don't believe Elvis is dead" to myself. She looked at me oddly, and I realized I'd been out loud again. She asked me "really, you don't? What do you think happened to him", clearly trying her best to take me seriously… or to decide whether I needed immediate help. I laughed and explained it to her. Whew!

In a worse example, I sang The Goo Goo Dolls' lyric "Do you wanna get married" when I was in a car with JR. She also didn't realize it was a lyric, and said, excitedly "really??" I laughed, and told her it was a lyric. She laughed too, but with a sadness that I didn't appreciate enough at the time.

She died wanting me to marry her.

I'm sorry JR, and I'm sorry I misled you.

The saddest thing in the world is not losing someone, it's losing someone and knowing you were wrong.

But wherever I have gone
I was sure to find myself there
--Social Distortion

I've been doing some technology work over the past few weeks. I've been doing a bunch of wireframes -- Basalmiq rules, seriously -- and writing some code -- Ruby reminds me of LISP, which makes me somewhat homesick for Princeton, and especially the Princeton Deli on Nassau street.

But only somewhat homesick -- Princeton is cold, boring, and … did I mention cold?

I also decided to go back to my roots and take apart an old Mac to fix it. It has a broken hard drive, but otherwise was fine.

Did you know my first job was to run wires for a computer company in Arkansas? Early networking. And I also assembled PCs -- you remember, when 8086-based PCs were expensive and rare? I remember assembling my first 80186 machine, which had an entire megabyte of RAM… although you could not address upwards of 640k, so you stuck a RAM disk in the remainder.

Ahh, the old days.

Anyway, I disassembled this iMac to pull the drive out. Good news, bad news story.

Good news? I removed the drive and ordered a replacement.

Bad news? I broke at least one other component, and likely rendered the system useless. A very expensive paperweight… that wouldn't be a very good paperweight, actually.

But, at least I get to feel technical again. It's nice to do something, rather than talk about doing something.

It's amazing how much I have forgotten, but I'm clearing the low hurdles one by one, making myself comfortable, and readying myself for the next set, of big, scary jumps.

Like working my way up to the 10 meter board. Step by step, facing my inadequacies. I can do this. Really.

For a lead role in a cage
-- Pink Floyd

I took the AirBART today from Oakland Airport to the BART The AirBART is a bus that takes you from the Oakland airport to the closest BART station, which is less than a mile away. The flight from Burbank to Oakland was 50 minutes . I measured the time from when I got in line for the AirBART until it got me to the BART station. It was 35 minutes. More than half as long as to fly 400 miles.

Efficiency at its finest.

A bottle of red, a bottle of white,
Whatever kind of mood you're in tonight
I'll meet you anytime you want
-- Billy Joel

If it's dark outside or light

2009-11-07T22:23:00.000-08:00

If you love me
won't you let me know?
--Coldplay

I was driving up the 101 the other day, in the Silicon Valley, and I came upon (and passed) a large city bus. The bus was packed with people, each looking out the window, or reading a magazine, but, apparently, never looking at each other.

This is, of course, the rule -- on a bus, you can't peer around at your fellow travelers. Unless you are traveling with them.

Or if you are a creep.

But I digress.

I noticed this bus, grimy, with oil stains on the engine cover, and dirt marks on the sides of the bus from where the wheels threw road mess up.

I noticed this bus -- in passing, as I passed it -- because the bus destination sign was prescient.

The destination signs on buses -- out here, at least -- is an LED sign that spells out the line, sometimes the line number, and often other information.

This bus' destination sign reflected a sublime, Manichean truth.

The bus' destination was "NOT".

So true.

// Side note: I have to specify where I am on the 101 these days, since I could be on the traffic-clogged 101 through the San Fernando Valley in LA, or the almost-equally-clogged 101 through the Silicon Valley.

And I have to specify which "valley" as well, since the referent changes if you are in SoCal or NorCal. I'll try to remember that. //

Somewhere 'round
mile marker 112,
Papa started humming the funk
-- Marc Broussard

I have been spending a roughly typical amount of time on the road. Well, less than in my previous short, happy life, but a reasonable amount, nonetheless.

// Side note: Yes, that was a Hemingway reference. Yes, I thought about rewriting the sentence to have only 5 words, and none longer than two syllables. But then I wouldn't have been able to use the word "syllable", and what fun would that have been? //

I am, however, in a far better mental space than my not-so-recent travel travail. As a result, I'm noticing more of the irony that used to amuse me about being away from home.

Have you ever been on a Southwest flight? I spend a fair amount of time in the Silicon Valley (see story, above, for those of you skipping around). I live close to the Burbank airport, and it's a quick jaunt to San Jose from Burbank. And the jaunt is best done on Southwest.

Southwest has all kinds of funny policies, including the seat number thing that apparently nobody can figure out. It's like forgetting your raincoat at a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening -- immediately flags you as a flight-virgin. Folks, match number on ticket to number on pole. Not rocket science. But you have to figure that any system that seems incomprehensible to so many travelers is probably designed wrong.

But that's not my point. Actually, I want to talk about the people who pretend not to understand, but clearly do understand. They cluster around the front of the boarding line. When they first get there, they give a token look of "confusion" -- in case anyone is following their trek -- and then settle down to enter the plane first, before anyone else. On my last flight, one of these reverse-lemmings actually pushed one of the people getting on because they needed extra time.

I thought about punching him, but the flight attendant did a good job of freezing the idiot in his place.

You see other behaviors from the genus Tool. They do stuff like throw their coats onto seats from rows away to save the seat. Or put their bags in the overhead bin, lay their coat out flat, and then close the bin so nobody else can put stuff in there.

It's hilarious to watch. Totally jerkish behavior, on a flight that is going to be 40 minutes long.

What always surprises me is who makes up Genus Tool. It's always middle aged guys in khaki pants and shirts with some technology logo on the pocket. It's not the teenaged emo kids, nor even the so-cool-it-hurts twentysomethings with the soul patch and plaid shirts.

Nope, it's the great spread of middle age.

Sigh, and shortly, I join that segment of the populace.

Regardless, I wonder. Is it the khakis that make them Tools? Perhaps a bad belt? Or is it sampling bias -- the odds of running into some annoying computer support person on the LA to SJ flight is so high that you oversample men onto Tool?

Such things keep me up nights. How about you?

When I was down,
I was your clown.
--Elton John

I was sitting in a hotel in London a couple of weeks ago, having dinner in the hotel restaurant. Nothing special, but reasonably nice. I was the first one in -- I'm always eating with the blue-haired crowd, early, but apparently no blue-hairs in South Ken that night, so I was alone.

Until three men came in. Two were Asian, clearly business executives. The third was Italian, clearly a marketing type; was unclear how smart he was.

Which strikes a chord of remembrance. But whatever.

The three were talking about a particular financial transaction -- a collateralized debt sale, if you care. The Italian was trying to convince the Asians to invest in creating a fund to get the securities, so they could then resell tranches of the securities. Was quite interesting to hear how they planned to divide the tranches. Such deals should be quite secret -- you are talking about trading strategies, and the margins you think you can get.

If it were me, I'd be speaking in a low voice, paying attention to others nearby.

The Italian had no such compunction. He was practically screaming. At first it was funny, so I (obviously) took out my notepad, a pen, and started taking notes. I was overacting like Jon Gruden commenting on a football game.

The Asians noticed, and got a bit squirrelly, pointing me out to the Screamer. He looked at me, and gave a lovely sniff of disdain, and went back to his chattering.

I couldn't help it -- I started laughing. I understood his point -- I had dirty hair, a couple of days of beard, and was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

The lack of ability to see beneath the surface also struck a chord. But, again, never mind.

The best part? He got the math wrong. He was explaining how the returns would be great, but he got the math wrong. I managed not to go up to the table and correct him. But it was a challenge.

Again, a chord.

No amount of elan can overcome a machine gun.
--paraphrased from War Made New

I was on a flight back from New York last week. Jet Blue is awesome, and, again, flies into and out of Burbank. Great for me.

I was sitting there, in my aisle seat halfway back the plane, minding my own business, watching a little TV, reading my Kindle, making some notes, generally being boring and nondescript.

About an hour outside of Burbank I felt a tap on my shoulder, from across the aisle. A woman was looking at me, slightly flustered.

I took off my headset and said hi -- I expected her to say she'd dropped her pen and it had rolled under my seat, or that her cat had escaped its carry-on purse and was climbing my leg, or some such thing.

Instead, she said "You're Douglas Merrill, aren't you?"

My first reaction was to think "how bizarre, she read my boarding pass". My second reaction was to wonder why she would have done so. And to get creeped out.

But I try to be charming.

// Ok, that's enough laughing from you. I said I try. That's true. Now be quiet. //

She went on to tell me that she recognized me from the cover of some technology magazine I was on. I think the issue came out more than a year ago.

I barely remember the article, why did she?

Anyway, I told that, yes, that was me. And thanked her for reading the article. And went back to ostentatiously making notes on a deck. She seemed content with our brief chat.

Tell me, dear OtherEnders, how should I have felt?

// Side note: The ads on Pandora are amazingly annoying. And so totally untargetted that they can't possibly have any reasonable CPM. I can't even remember the subject of the last annoying ad that just played. Ads only work if people pay attention. And generally, ads work better if the people have some connection to the ad, in the moment. That's why search advertising works so well. Sigh. //

Back to Genus Tool. The Oakland airport -- or maybe it's San Jose, I can't remember -- has tables with plugs so you can charge your laptop or whatever. While waiting for my last flight home, I had a very dead laptop and phone, so I went looking for a plug.

There were plenty of plugs, but a card-carrying member of Genus Tool had spread his laptop and papers out, covering the entire table. As I walked up to find a spot to rest my laptop (I carry a Macbook Air, it's small). He actually hunched down and spread his arms out over his papers, like a gorilla defending its feeding ground.

I was tired, and had a headache. So I didn't laugh, which would have been the right answer.

No, I said something like "Really, Spanky? That's your best idea?" and proceeded to set my laptop on top of the most distal of his paper piles.

He didn't say anything to me until I left to board my plane.

Does that make me the silverback of this tribe? Or just a soon-to-be-card-carrying Tool myself?

And if the answer is no,
Can I change your mind?
--The Killers.

My book is done, and you can buy it on Amazon now. You can find it by doing a search for my name. The marketing materials are basically done, and we are figuring out publicity and the like now. The publicity will include interviews, articles, and, naturally, tweets and blogs.

I won't use this blog for it, but I'll let you know where I craft that prose.

The book is about organizing your life to reduce your stress. It's about psychology and technology and society. It talks about how you process information and why you aren't as good at it as you think.

I wrote it along with Jim Martin, a most excellent coauthor if there ever was one.

I'm really proud of it. I think it's useful. I think it's funny. According to my pal Q, I quoted too much Coldplay in my lyrics. That might be true, I don't recall.

Mostly I think it's a great survey of who we are, how we got here, and what today's tools can do to undo … well, to undo what those same tools have done to you.

I hope you will tell me what you think, let me know if it's helpful, and decide if I quoted Coldplay too often.

It hits the streets in March of next year. The publicity will start a bit before then, although SL hasn't told me exactly when it begins. I'm sure it's on my calendar, ironically enough.

The only freedom that man really wants
is the freedom to be comfortable
-- paraphrased from Sons of Anarchy

I rode my Saxon to Vegas a few weeks ago, with my friend Johnny. I might have written about that already. Can't remember.

The ride there was lovely. Sunny, mid-90s, not enough traffic to worry about, just wide open expanses of desert being eaten up minute by minute.

I was listening to my iPod while I rode. Yes, I know that's a bad idea, but riding with music is spectacular. The bike makes you feel free and untied from the cares of the normal, caged world. The music, as long as you pick it correctly, adds to the experience, amplifying it, if you will let me make a bad pun.

It's kind of like going to a laser light show at a planetarium -- remember, you like the PlaneTARium -- watching the blinky lights while listening to Pink Floyd. The whole is far more than the sum of its parts.

I built a play list for the ride -- I think there were something like 4 days of music on the list. Perhaps I went a bit overboard. I had the tunes on shuffle, listening to random song after random song.

But I noticed something, as I sang along.

Almost all the songs I paid attention to, in between the air, the wheels, and the road, were about death.

Do you think that's sampling bias, as well?

You know it's a fool
that plays it cool.
--Beatles

One of my friends, over dinner the other night, asked me what Jeanne was really like.

I was pulled up short. I think I've been talking about her death, and what I did well, and badly, while she was ill.

But there was so much more to her, and to us, than that.

Perhaps I should write about that. Write about her. Not her as sick patient, but her as crafty-but-unable-to-finish. Or her as "I can't remember that, write it on this napkin". Or her as "What should I do?", "say thank you." "oh."

I'm sorry, dear OtherEnders, if I have failed to do so.

Your mind tricked you
to feel the pain,
of someone else
leaving the game.
--Queensryche

My beloved Dalmatian, Minnie, has a brain tumor. It's probably lymphoma, which is probably untreatable. We are trying various drugs to see if anything takes effect. Some have shown a little improvement.

But not very much. If you follow me on Twitter, you've seen loads of tweets about the diagnosis and treatment. I'm trying to maintain a sense of humor, or painful irony perhaps, about picking up medicines at Walgreen's for Minnie Merrill, because some of the drugs are really people drugs, not dog drugs, and making up a social security number since they require one before they'll give me the drug.

It's terribly sad to watch her. She doesn't understand, and she's scared, and I can't make it better.

Sometimes, when she's lying on her bed, not sleeping, but not able to get up and walk, she gets a look in her eye that I recognize.

It was the look Jeanne used to have when she had nothing to distract her from the pain, the humiliation, the fear, the sadness.

And I couldn't help Jeanne either.

I thought that second chances were possible. Maybe I'm wrong.

What would you change if you could?

2009-08-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

What would you change if you could?

I was sitting in my house the other night, looking out the kitchen window into the darkness. In front of me is the hedge of ficus trees. Beyond that, the street, with intermittent traffic buzzing by, on their way to Hollywood for the sin and scandal, or the Valley to shop or to hide.

I often wonder where cars are going, even when I'm in one. Don't you?

I did my best
it wasn't much.
I couldn't feel
so I tried to touch
--Leonard Cohen

I know I wrote about traffic last posting, so I won't go into it again. Rather, hear the murmur of sound in the background, and let it give rise to the noise in the foreground.

As I sat there, I noticed an abnormally large fly buzzing about. Seeing such flies makes me wonder what's in the water around here to yield such huge insects. But let's ignore that for now.

The fly was buzzing around the window I was looking through, and the noise was bugging me.

Yes, the pun was intended.

Reflecting for a moment on being the top of the food chain, I decided to kill the fly. I gave myself a moment to bask in the thrill of the decision, flying in the face of my humanity.

Yes, that one was intended too.

Fail to see the tragic.
Turn it into magic
--Marilyn Manson

There was a flyswatter lying on the counter next to me, cleverly masquerading as a Pottery Barn catalog. I rolled up the magazine, and went to town swatting the fly.

Needless to say, I missed it. Several times.

But then the fly outsmarted itself. It flew down to the lower corner of the window, directly behind a pill bottle that was left there for no apparent reason.

I grabbed the pill bottle and pushed it back to the glass, crushing the fly behind it. Voila, no more foreground buzzing, back to reveling in the background noise from the street.

Sometimes you have to use the weapons that lie scattered around you.

Me and the royal denizens
got damn good reasons for our sins
--Mary Gauthier

I've been reading a lot since exiting stage left. Some good books -- I'm currently focused on the Ascent of Money -- but loads and loads of garbage -- fantasy, science fiction, war novels, general dreck. It appears there are trends, or fads, in books as well as in fashion, etc.

The current fad is books about vampires. With a close second place given to books about magical detectives. Generally very strange, and, unfortunately, not very good.

A really good marker of whether your book stinks? If you find yourself using bizarre (or made-up, or italicized) words in some created language, and defining the words in the next sub-clause.

For example, "You don't want an undead to have access to the Monnowtizer, the weapon the gods made to kill undead. And even worse is to walk in on a BloggyWhackp, the race of armored dwarves known for carrying magically spelled pill bottles."

Really, if you are making up words, and defining them in such a hacked way, go write fairy tales. Or mark your books as "cheesy", in which case I won't clutter my Kindle or my mind with them.

Thankyouverymuch.

In her hand when she died
was a note that cried
"Fare thee well,
Tecumseh valley"
-nanci griffith, originally by Townes van zandt

I'm writing this while watching "Elton John: Me, myself, and I" in the background. Jeanne was a huge Elton John fan. She'd have loved this show. To large extent, this show is a biopic of Elton John making fun of himself.

Part of his life was intertwined with the life, and death, of Ryan White. The images from White’s death, in Indiana, are filled with women with that fluffy hairstyle that women wore in the 80s. I have a picture of Jeanne with that hair, in Indiana. Why did anyone wear that hairstyle? It's horrible.

Now that I say that it is horrible, it’s going to turn out that I had the same haircut at some point. Thanks for playing.

The ending credits of the TV show are clips from a live stage show Elton John did in Las Vegas, called the Red Piano or something. I saw that show with Jeanne. She loved it.

I ended up buying 3 or 4 sets of tickets to the show. Yes, we only went once.

When Jeanne and I planned to go to the show in Vegas, I was in the middle of my scut work for the Google IPO. But for a variety of reasons, we didn't exactly know when the issue would go out, and what trips or meetings or general scut would be required of me.

So, I'd buy a pair of tickets for the show on, say, a Friday, and then I'd learn that I needed to be at meeting X, and so couldn't make the flight, or whatever. We missed the show, over and over again. It became almost a joke, although Jeanne really wanted to see it.

Finally, we made the show. I can't remember, now, if we went before the IPO, or after, or in the middle. We got good seats, on the right side, near the front. His piano was on the left side. She was giddy through the show, singing along at the top of her lungs. At the end of the show, if I recall correctly, various people from the crowd went up on the stage to dance or generally make themselves look foolish.

Jeanne didn't go up. She was too embarrassed. She'd have been prettier and more graceful than anyone else on stage, in her silly 4 inch heels, but she couldn't make herself go up. Then, just as everyone got moved off the stage, she worked up her courage to go up.

Too late.

Sometimes you have to use the weapons scattered around you. Those heels were definitely a weapon. And I wish she hadn't been ashamed to use them.

I have the skill
I have the will
To breathe you in
While I can
-Sick Puppies

Now, to be filed under "creepy", I was watching a horror movie called "Henry, portrait of a serial killer" last night. It's absolutely terrifying, even to me. Very disturbing, shot in this slightly faded looking film, that feels ever-so-slightly out of focus. Kind of like what your family's home movies of that trip to Mount Petit Jean in the summer. Only instead of being about how you can't really dive well, "Henry" is about... well, a serial killer.

There is a female character. She's the sister of the journeyman killer. She's sort-of the love interest, although the movie doesn't end well for her.

She looks exactly like Jeanne. Well, not exactly, the character in the movie has a bit rounder face, but, regardless, the actress looks closely enough that it distracted me from the movie. Which wasn't a bad thing, now that I think about it.

The end of the movie has a good lesson: Buy bigger luggage. Really, you don't want to know what I mean by that.

On a more cheerful note, don't you think that SL looks like Heather Graham? Of course, SL is about 4 inches shorter. Don't forget to remind her of that. She loves being reminded she's short.

Like every generation yields
A newborn hope
Unjaded by their years
-Sarah McLachlan

I leave tomorrow morning to ride my motorcycle to Vegas. I'm going up with a friend. Riding my Saxon. The motorcycle that left me stranded on Ventura Boulevard. The bike that nearly got me killed on the 101.

Yup, I'm riding into the desert on a death trap.

I wonder if this is a good decision?

Control yourself.
Take only what you need from it
-- MGMT

It’s been a red letter week for the US judiciary. Apparently, in the US, being innocent doesn’t prevent you getting executed.

In the last several years, there has been a lot of interest in proving the innocence of people on death row, using DNA or other new techniques.

Apparently, it turns out, however, that you aren’t guaranteed to be able to prove your innocence using DNA evidence, even when it’s potentially available.

That’s bad enough. But worse?

How about a case where we know the prisoner is innocent, but has exhausted normal appeals.

As it turns out, here in the land of milk and honey, apparently the truth will not set you free.

Unless you mean free from this mortal coil.

Yes, indeed, a great week for US jurisprudence.

We all fall in love
Sometimes
--Elton John

It has also been another proud week of health care debate. I don’t even know where to start with this one.

Shall we start with the people talking about how illegal aliens have health care coverage, and that this is bad somehow.

Leaving aside the morality of that particular position, I think that most undocumented workers get their primary health care from public hospital emergency rooms.

How about the Medicare recipient who went to town – in a town hall, no less – on how the government shouldn’t have a public option for health care.

Hmm, hypocrisy cleanup on Aisle 1, please.

I don’t even know where to begin. But I know how to end.

You might ask what it takes to remember 
When you know that you’ve seen it before
-- Jackson Browne

If you see a bike and rider stranded on the side of I-15, slow down and see if I need a ride. Or send a taxi. Either way.

Yes, really, it’s Douglas

2009-08-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

She got shot down in the road. 
She looked up before she went, 
Said, this isn’t really what I meant. 
And the daily news said, two with one stone.
--Sheryl Crow

I had a complete parental moment tonight. I had taken the dogs on a field trip to their favorite holy ground – In ‘N Out Burgers. After paying homage to the great fast food gods in the sky – or in the drive-thru, anyway – we had gone back home. I pulled our SUV (hybrid, of course) into the driveway, but not into the garage.

Long story, you can ask me why I didn’t park in the garage later. No, it’s not later yet.

Anyway, the street I live on is fairly busy, and my driveway opens right onto the street. Thus, traffic is a fact of life. Since I hadn’t pulled into the garage, the car was right next to the street, and, by extension, right next to the traffic.

I opened the door to get the dogs out. Normally, they are good at waiting their turn, and I can easily get each out individually, and keep them away from the traffic.

Not this time.

Both my Dalmatian and the Brown Dog decided they wanted to be first out. I managed to grab the Brown Dog and get him headed into the house – he’s pretty smart that way. The Dalmatian? She’s an escape artist. She jumps out of the car at the same time as the Brown Dog, but lands wrong on the driveway and falls toward the traffic.

I dive out to grab her and pull her back in. Now, really, she’s 10 feet from the side of the road and there aren’t any cars at the moment. But my head didn’t see it that way.

Revolutionaries wait
 for my head on a silver plate. 
Just a puppet on a lonely string. 
Oh, who would ever want to be king?
--Coldplay

I thought she was about to get squished. I grabbed her and hauled her into the car with all my strength – and I’m much stronger than a 45-pound Dalmatian. As I pulled her, she ducked her head and cowered. She was fine before my gymnastics. She was fine afterwards, but scared that she was in trouble – she hates being in trouble.

All day long, she fills me up with dogma. 
She's all magazines and Benzedrine and vodka
--Sheryl Crow

I got her inside, and then proceeded to yell at both dogs. Neither dog understood what was wrong, but bore the yelling stoically. Or at least without talking back.

Those of you playing the home game probably noticed that dogs can’t talk, and thus can’t talk back. But go back to your Sudoku, I’m busy here.

I was totally angry – about nothing. It took me a minute to realize that I was terrified that something was going to happen to Minnie, and that I couldn’t prevent it, and that I’d gotten lucky this time. But what about next time.

A total parental moment.

Going where nobody says hello,
 they don't talk to anybody they don't know. 
You'll wind up in some factory
that's full time filth  and nowhere left to go. 
Walk home to an empty house,  
sit around all by yourself. 
I know it might sound strange, but I believe 
You'll be coming back before too long
--REM

My book is finally done. It’s in the production process now. I have no idea, really, what that process is, or does, but, regardless, the book is in said process.

Apparently you can preorder it on Amazon now. It hits the bookstores – on a shelf near you! – in March of next year. We are just doing final stuff – the cover art, the stuff on the back of the book, etc – but it’s done. A year of my life, captured in black-and-white on acid-free paper.

Ironic, a bit, since I am rarely acid-free myself. And I rarely see the world in black-and-white.

As an aside, I still believe in health care reform. And I did the last time around as well. I have no idea why that’s relevant at the moment, but I’m writing it, so you are stuck with my creative muse. Deal with it.

Back to my story.

I’m not the first person to write a book. In fact, there’s a well-known book by a well-known author in an area of interest of mine. No, I am not even going to use initials here.

A colleague of mine and I had a running joke about this book by this other person. In each and every opportunity, the author would find some way to work a mention of his book into the conversation. Even if it felt forced, and hacked, you knew he was going to plug his book somehow.

We called him “Buy My Book”, instead of by his name.

Naturally, I am becoming “Douglas [buy-my-book] Merrill”. I promise, the book is good. It’s funny, and clever, and has song lyrics, and makes sense.

The book is about personal organization – what makes you stressed, and how a set of tools can help you get unstressed. (I don’t think unstressed is a word, however). I talk about the psychology of organization, and how history plays into our day-to-day challenges, and suggest some ways to reduce your stress.

Several people have read it, and nobody has asked for a refund yet. So, feel free to order a copy. Once we have the cover art done, anyway.

And, yes, I’m going to talk more about the book over the next several posts, and, yes, we are going to have a site devoted to the book. Stay tuned.

Did you envy all the dancers 
Who knew all the moves?
--Crosby, Stills, and Nash

I was involved in Google’s IPO, many years ago. There was a small team of us who did loads of paperwork, busy work, and general scut work. The three of us who were on that team spent an inordinate amount of time together.

One of my fellow scut-tees went on vacation to France right after the event. He bought me a bottle of wine that needed to sit for at least 5 years.

He gave it to me, and Jeanne grabbed a yellow sticky. She wrote, “Hold until June, 2009” on the sticky, and put it on the label. She underlined the date, in case it wasn’t obvious.

I was sorting through wine in my closet a couple of weeks ago, and I came across the missive from Jeanne. Or from the ghost of Jeanne-past, actually.

Seeing her handwriting pulled me up short. I can remember the smile on her face when she wrote it. I can remember that she wanted to drink it with me on a picnic somewhere. I can remember how proud she was of me, even though there was no reason for it.

I sat on my kitchen floor and cried.

Another day, another kick in the stomach.

Give my gun away,  
Is that alright? 
If you don’t shoot it,
 How am I supposed to hold it?
-Damien Rice

I asked SL what she thought I should do with the wine. She asked me what the possibilities were.

I told her I could drink it alone while SL is on vacation. I could drink it with SL, on a picnic somewhere. I could drink it with some friends of Jeanne’s… if I could find any. Or I could drink it with friends of mine, who wouldn’t mind if my eyes watered a little.

SL thought that I should definitely not drink it alone.

SL and I took it to a dinner at The Surgeon’s and The Lawyer’s. They were very gracious about my periodically drifting off from the conversation. I talked to Jeanne a bit, and asked her if she liked the wine.

Not surprisingly, JR didn’t answer, but I think she’d have liked it, and would have wanted to hold my hand while drinking it.

So I held hers. Thanks for the wine. Thanks for the note, Jeanne.

Thanks, SL, The Surgeon, and The Lawyer, for letting me cry over a very good bottle of Bordeaux.

The bottle, empty, now sits above my desk. Where it will gather dust, unlike my memories.

Got a strangely calm voice on the other line 
Sneaky little priest trying to reach out to swine 
He said, "Hello my name is Father Tim 
Seems to me your zeal for this life 
Has been wearing a little thin"
--Sheryl Crow

I can’t believe I’ve ever quoted one artist this many times in one post. It’s possible that I was listening to a Sheryl Crow album in the car. I don’t remember, but it’s odd that so many lyrics from one artist come to my mind while I’m writing.

I’ve spent a lot of the last few weeks making jokes about security. I made some on the stage of a talk I gave at a conference about security – nothing like making fun of your audience.

Other times, I’ve made security jokes to myself in lines. Now that I think of it, talking to myself and grinning probably made me more interesting to the security folks. But never mind that.

There were 4 police officers at a checkpoint outside of LAX, making drivers stop as they come into the departures part of the airport. Four. That’s more than a normal traffic stop. That’s a lot. The best part? Three of the four were off to one side laughing, and the fourth didn’t look at, or examine, or generally show any interest in the cars that desultorily stopped at the check point.

What security is that providing? I don’t know. And I don’t feel safer.

At one of the conferences where I gave that speech, they wouldn’t let me have a wireless microphone, because the conference attendees would block the RF of the microphone.

I hadn’t thought of that.

I laughed, and then did my best Dean Martin impression with a wired hand microphone.

That security, although hilarious, I understood. I like security, when it makes sense.

Unlike, say, the officers outside of LAX. Or this airport wireless that keeps asking me to agree to the Terms and Conditions… over and over again.

I threw the last punch too hard
--Elton John

I have mixed feelings about being kicked in the stomach over and over again. On the one hand, I’d love not to feel the kicks, the pains, the bruises. On the other hand, I never want to even remotely forget her.

All in all, the pain seems worth it. The bottles and cards, they will fade. The songs, they will go out of style and be reduced to the late-night AM stations.

But the limned image of her in my mind, that remains.

SL is in France. She doesn’t speak French. Maybe one of you could help her get a taxi to where she’s going? I’d appreciate it, and I’ll reciprocate with a witty security joke, and try not to push my book at the same time.

Peace.

Your readers are waiting

2009-07-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

Hello again my Otherenders. Hope the summer has been treating you well.

I’m sitting outside at my house, with music playing behind me, sun on my arms and legs (I’m wearing a hat), and it’s already in the 80s. Pretty darn good start to a day.

However, I’ve got a conundrum – I want coffee. I made a pot, although my coffee is so weak SL calls it dirty water. I was getting ready to pour coffee into my favorite mug – which commemorates something we did at Google, but, more importantly, is huge. Huge == “more coffee, fewer trips”. A nice optimization for me.

However, my coffee mug was nowhere to be seen. MIA, I guess. Having an out-of-cabinet experience. Gone fishin’

Anyway, it’s not here. So I try to find the next largest mug, and, as often happens to me, am confronted by a math problem. I have a cartoon mug that is pretty wide, and normal height.

I’m halfway to deciding that I want to use this cartoon cup when I notice a mug behind it that is a little taller, and wider at the top. With a wider and higher top, this cup has greater volume. Unfortunately, life’s not that easy.

The mug’s sides are not straight. Rather they are a curved shape that starts at a smaller base, and gradually gets wider, ultimately ending with a cup mouth that is far bigger than the base, and larger than my cartoon mug.

The curve making up the side of the mug isn’t even – it curves more as it gets closer to the lip of the mug. In other words, the radius of the cup changes from base to cup, but it begins to change more quickly as you get closer to top. For those of you who like math, the second derivative is increasing as the curve varies from base to top.

Now, my conundrum. Which mug holds more coffee? In the cartoon (simple) case, I can compute volume with the standard volume of a cylinder (2* pi * radius * height). However, if the radius isn’t the same across the entire cylinder, that formula won’t work.

There are optimizations of volume computations. For example, there is a clear way to compute the volume of a funnel, in both radians and more traditional measures. However, by their very nature, funnels grow from base to lip evenly. The radius doesn’t grow more quickly near the lip. The second derivative of a funnel is zero.

I assume there’s a way to compute the volume of my Capitol coffee mug. If you could measure the radius at each point, you could just sum each measure. Basically, cut the cup into a very large number of horizontal slices and compute the area of each. Which is something like taking the Integral of the area of each circle, from height = base to height = lip, for those of you who like the math game.

But there are many a slip twixt cup and lip, and here’s another. I can’t figure out how to predict the radius of my cup at any given point. I don’t recognize the function that would predict the radius – If I did, I could simply rotate that function around the y-axis (using another nice bit of calculus), but I don’t.

I could measure the cup, but I don’t have a soft measuring tape nearby.

Thus, I don’t know if my Capitol mug is larger than my cartoon mug. Very troubling.

In case you’re interested, I took the cartoon cup. Better memories. And drank it all dry, so I’m headed back to the pot for more caffeine (in an easy to swallow tablet).

While I’m gone…

<6>
--Boston

By the way, SL points out the obvious. Fill one with water and pour the water into the other to see which holds more.

I didn’t think of that. There’s meaning there, I’m sure.

I don't want anything more
Than to see your face when you open the door
You’ll make me beans on toast and a nice cup of tea
And we'll get Chinese and watch TV
- Lily Allen

Picture a small town in the north part of Massachusetts in the very end of the 1600s. The relationships between the settlers and the Native American tribes had begun to fray across a variety of tribes. Raids from one party to the other are not uncommon.

Not the story you remember from Thanksgiving.

A 45 year-old man named Thomas Dustin and his wife Hannah had a lovely family of 13 children. (Yes, I know, puts the Octo-mom to shame). On this early spring day, a Native American raiding party came to attack the Dustin’s farm.

Thomas Dustin, who was working the fields, ran back to his house to warn his wife and get them all to flee. However, the 13th child, Martha, was just a few days old. Hannah did not believe it was safe to move her.

Hannah and Martha could not flee the coming attack, but the other 12 children could, with the help of an adult.

Hannah urged Thomas to take the rest of the children and get them to safety.

In some nice Hollywood movie, the father would say “No, I’m not leaving you!” and somehow she’d get the energy to escape with her family.

This isn’t Hollywood. Hannah convinced Thomas to flee. Leaving her was likely to sentence her to death. And the baby as well. But Hannah convinced Thomas to go.

A few minutes later, the Native Americans captured both Hannah and Martha.

The Native Americas killed Martha by striking her head into a tree. Hannah escaped from slavery a few weeks later.

Would you be able to make Hannah’s choice? Or Thomas’?

I don’t know what I would do..

God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes
Because then you might know what it’s like to have to choose.
--Everlast

I just finished the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It’s a good read, with lots of interesting pieces of data. I love bits and bobs of data. I like the book even more because it isn’t a screed, it doesn’t preach that there is one, and only one, appropriate food system, connecting plants through animals to us.

He does, however, point out the stupidity of the phrase “food system”. I have to agree.

Some of his statistics are terrifying, and surprised me. My personal favorites relate to additional calories we consume above the long-run average in the past few decades. The extra calories, perhaps as few as 500, created a pandemic of obesity which, in turn, forces additional cost and pressure into the health care system. And the extra calories tend to hit hardest the poorest of us all, who may also not have great health care access.

I was also blown away by his measurements of the number of calories –especially calories derived from petrochemicals – required to grow a calorie of food.

However, the best line in the book, in my opinion, relates to new methods of growing corn, which is the base food for all the rest of the system (more or less). Natural corn – the stuff that nature built without (much) help from us requires a certain amount of space between plants to ensure growth and pollination. However, a few years ago, the corn industry started to focus on increasing the yield of corn for each acre of soil. The higher the yield, the more corn to get sold, or turned into high fructose corn syrup, or ethanol additives, and so forth.

To radically increase yield, agribusiness companies found ways to create specialized hybrids that could thrive very close to their brethren, and all plants would produce relatively similar product at the same time. And then die, falling into a mass grave, for future tilling.

This hybrid corn product generates equality – truly, all pigs are equal, and none are more equal than others.

Socialist paradise is a field of F1 corn
--Michael Pollan

SL and I flew up to the Bay Area last week. For a variety of not-too-interesting reasons, we were carrying life vests and a wakeboarding rope-and-handle in our carry on bags.

Now, if you were a security screener, and you saw a 40 foot coil of polypropylene cord, attached to some high-density piece of material, what would you think? Would you recognize it as a wakeboard rope and handle? I doubt it.

Would you wonder if, say, this was something dangerous that could burn, explode, something? If you so wondered, you might pull the bag aside and have it checked. That would seem prudent, in a land where I can’t carry 4 ounces of hand sanitizer for fear of a punk planet.

Guess what happened going through security.

Nothing.

Have a safe flight, SL, and let’s hope you aren’t one of the bad guys, because the screeners won’t be able to tell if you are.

Yes I'm waiting by the phone 
I'm waiting for you to call me up and tell me I'm not alone 
Cause I want somebody to shove
 I need somebody to shove
 I want somebody to shove me
-- Soul Asylum

3 years older, no wiser

2009-06-23T15:50:00.001-07:00

The smell of hospitals
in winter.
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters,
but no pearls.
--Counting Crows

It's been another year, Jeanne. I dreamed about you the other night. It was nice to see you again.

Jeanne Michele Russell, April 27, 1961 to June 23, 2006.

More than this

2009-06-13T17:31:00.000-07:00

Wake up in the morning,
See your sunrise.
Does it go down?
--Fleetwood Mac

Hello again, my OtherEnders. For those of you playing along more regularly, guess where I am?

Yes, I'm on an airplane.

I'm headed North, to Alaska. My journey today is a voyage of discovery. Discovering history, bears, and trains. To find, and to lose, a childhood and a set of dreams. Seeking the boogeyman, and angels. And people, some good, some bad.

And some without teeth.

I'm also in search of some good weather -- ironically, the weather in Fairbanks when we land will be nicer than the weather in LA when we left. Yup, I'm going to *ALASKA* to find sun.

SL is asleep, as always, curled up entirely in her seat, with an eyeshade on. It's cold on the plane, and there are no blankets -- because "they took them out, after the flu, you know, and haven't given them back yet" according to the flight attendant -- so she's shivering lightly. Her blonde hair is pulled up in a bun, as is her wont, but a few tendrils curl around her mouth, as if she is tasting them. She's not sleeping well.

I've done more traveling after finishing my bit part in the Night of the Long Knives than I did during it. But most of this travel has been for fun, and much of it has involved motorcycles. And, so far, nothing has required my passport, although that will change soon.

He's a sensitive type.
His intentions are clear,
he wants to be well liked.
--Counting Crows

I know I wrote about my trip to San Diego. I can't remember what else, if anything, I've written about, so let's have a brief trip down memory lane.

I love deserts, and there are some lovely ones near LA, so we've made a few motorcycle trips out.

We rode to Death Valley. It was 102 degrees when we got there, and 60 when we left 2 days later. The wind on the way home was so strong that I had the motorcycle in a lean to the right the entire trip. I tucked the bike in next to 18 wheelers when I could do so safely, since they blocked the brutal winds for a bit. When we got home, my right shoulder hurt from maintaining the lean.

Being in Death Valley was really fun. I'd never been there, so it was all new to me. We did some sightseeing, including going to a ghost town. The people left the town less than 100 years ago, and yet the entire place was destroyed, roofs caved in, walls collapsed. The entire place was pulling an excellent Ozymandius imitation.

The next week, we rode to Joshua Tree. I think I've written about that trip. We stayed in a little 2 room hotel at the north Gate of the Park. The little city that guards the gate looks like every dive town I know, with tattoo parlors, gun shops, teeny grocery stores that sell more MadDog 20/20 than juice, and people who, mostly, don't meet your eyes. They are hiding from something, running from something, sometimes themselves.

And the ones who look at you are predators. There is a lot of prey that finds itself in towns like that.

Joshua Tree National Park is fabulous. The top half is a high desert covered with thousands of Joshua trees, as far as you can see, and rock formations erupting from the earth in "unnatural" ways. The bottom half is a lower desert, with warmer temperatures, and desert rock mountains.

And JR, but that's a different story.

We spent a couple of days in the Park, saw loads of pretty things, and said hello to JR. Then we rode back. And the wind picked up again.

Aargh.

Clearly a case for
corn flakes and classics
--Elton John

Do you remember those things you used to be able to buy from that electronics store -- I think it was Staples -- the "easy" button? It was a battery powered big red button -- looking all the world like the emergency shut down button on every piece of electronics -- and when you pushed it, it yelled "That was easy!"

It's fun for the first few times, and then it becomes annoying. When others around you find it annoying, it gets fun again for a few times.

But after that it's just annoying. Plus I often had bruises on my arm where someone nearby (and annoyed), punched me in the upper arm. I bruise easily, poor me.

Anyway, wouldn't it be fun if you could program the thing to play some MP3 sound? No, I don't mean a song, I mean someone's recorded voice saying "That was stupid!" or "You're funny looking!" or "Stop punching my arm!"

If I were a better electrician/circuit board handyman, I could make it do so. But I don't know how to modify the button. And it's easier to program it as a little computer application.

Tragic, isn't it, the death of the physical.

We are fools to have won
--Dire Straits

The lady behind me on the plane is cleaning her hands with those towelettes ... compulsively. I wouldn't care except for the fact that they stink. And she's reading "Jesus Object Lessons".

Apparently, Christ didn't use proper punctuation.

And I wonder what object lessons might be applied? Avoid cruciate experiences? Don't play with nails? Be nice to fallen women?

Somewhere, my soul is being covered in kindling. I guess that's okay, as long as one knows it.

Make each impression
a little bit stronger
--Rush

My book is done. My coauthor (Jim) and I shipped it off to "production" this week. It hits the street in March of 2010.

It's very cool, well written (if I say so myself), and filled with song lyrics.

I'm going to start describing it, sharing bits and pieces, and starting a discussion about the content soon. Please watch this space! I'm very excited for people to begin reading the work. Coming soon to a bookstore near you (and Amazon, naturally).

There's something about the
Southland in the springtime
-- Indigo Girls

I got to hang out at the start of the LA Marathon a couple of weeks ago. My friend, The Surgeon, was running in the race, despite not having trained for it.

I spent the start of the race standing right under the starter's flag. (Thanks Russ!) The start was amazing. I've never seen the like -- it was a sea of humanity, breaking over the rocks of the streets of downtown Los Angeles. As I stood there, the runners flowed by me, starting the run. It took more than 20 minutes for all the runners to pass. I started taking pictures on my phone of the start, but found myself overwhelmed with the weight of the mass of humanity running.

It felt like an evening that you spend on an open sea shore, listening to the waves break, over and over again, on the rocks just up the coast from you. It's a profound feeling, making you feel smaller, less central, less relevant.

I'm pretty sure that it's good for me to feel that way sometimes. Not because I pretend to be especially central to anything of note. Rather, because feeling smaller makes my problems seem proportionally smaller, less central, less relevant.

SL, The Lawyer, and I sat on some company's sign, out in front of a building, directly next to the finish line. We watched the wheelchair entrants pass, and cheered until our voices were hoarse. We watched students running to raise funds for their schools finish. We watched people cry as they passed the finish line, and others yell for joy. We watched one man cross the finish line who had leg cramps that were so intense that he could only move two steps, and then had to pause, take another two, and so forth.

The determination of that sea of humanity also reminds me of the sea shore.

And yes, The Surgeon finished, and barely looked winded.

I got some money
I saved
Enough to get underway
--Melissa Etheridge

I have decided to stop watching CNN.

Conway, where I grew up, had cable television relatively early -- for example, I remember the day when MTV came on, and yes, I saw the Buggles video... although I didn't like it.

I recall CNN coming together, and the controversies about CNN reporters getting access to the White House press room, and how the traditional media all said that there was no way a 24 hour news network could survive.

And yet it did, producing amazing journalists (Christiane Amanpour, anyone?), and great in depth coverage (the puppet opera, generally known as the impeachment trial).

I remember when CNN2 hit the airways. I loved the format of a 30 minute top news summary, with some random stuff mixed in, like a few minutes of entertainment news. Of course, the marketing people ultimately got the lame "CNN2" name rebranded as "Headline News".

And somewhere along the line, journalism as a profession died. Or, if not dead, at least entered a semi-vegetative state.

CNN spent 2 hours each night for an entire week recently interviewing the top several American Idol contestants.

I have nothing against AI, and think it's great to see people chasing their dreams. But there were two American journalists on trial in North Korea at the time. They were convicted of espionage. Perhaps that would be a more important story?

At some point, CNN became Bread and Circus. No, not the organic store that you find in the Boston area (thanks John!). Nope, think Romanic history. When did we decide that news isn't worth the airtime?

OK, if CNN has become fluff weekly, then surely there is somewhere else to turn? Well, there's always FOX News... but I think I do prefer my news fair, and balanced, for real.

LA is the land of the world's worst local news coverage, and I'm not compelled by the half-hour national news shows.

I listen to NPR in the afternoons, giving me my longer interpretive news stories, but it's not news, exactly. And I haven't yet figured out the radio equivalent of TiVo, and am not necessarily in my car at that particular time period.

OK, I'm overstating here -- I mostly listen to NPR via their RSS feed to Google Reader, but, still, it's not ideal for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that I read faster than I listen.

OK, now, somewhere out there Q is hopping up and down, screaming "what about newspapers and magazines?!?!"

He's saying that, of course, because he is the last gasp of literate reporting in a particular well regarded news magazine. He certainly represents an overwhelming majority of the human-computational-capacity of that magazine... and a measurable component of the same measure for all news magazines. But that's irrelevant right now.

So, let's read newspapers, shall we? I'm not smart enough to read the New York Times, although the coverage is pretty terrific. The LA Times has good articles as well (and, no, not only on acting).

Have you read the SF Chronicle lately? Yeah, me neither. Have you seen any great reporters getting raises lately? Yeah, me neither. One of the best newspaper journalists I have ever known isn't writing for the paper anymore (he's editing the web version, so it's close, but I'm trying to make a point here!)

This is home
--Sheryl Crow

I get much of my news from bloggers these days. In other words, I'm reading news "analysis" from people who know no more about journalism than... well ... me. You are, after all, reading my blog, yes?

And, no, I don't intend to begin telling the news. I'm more of a People's Historian than a journalist.

I've given loads of talks in my time about the incredible advantages of the democratization of information, about how important it is that everyone can tell their stories, and how the only difference between a revolution and civil war is who won (since history is written by the winners).

I think that is all true. I want to hear authentic voices on stories, especially stories about things with which I share no context. I want to hear the voices of people who aren't like me, especially those who wouldn't like me.

I love freedom of speech. (Let's have a golf clap for the folks who crafted the bill of rights, please).

The legend grows
About how you got lost
but you made your way back home
--The Killers

// Sidenote: And while I'm on the topic, did I really hear a constitutional lawyer, on CNN, advocating prior restraint to prevent "lone wolf" attacks like that piece of violence done at the Holocaust Museum last week?

Wow, I must be losing touch. Seriously? Stop them from talking because we don't like what they say?

I despise white supremacists. I think the folks that deny the Holocaust should get off the rock. I don't believe that Jesus cares about your sex life or your marriage.

And I'd give every bit of me to ensure that those cretins can talk.

Prior restraint? Wow. I don't want to be restrained next. //

The problem with the democratization of information is that most people can't write. And many can't think.

Apropos of nothing at all, when did Ashton Kutcher become the voice of reason and forethought about social media? (Extra points for anyone who follows this joke).

In the cacophony of citizen reporters -- like me -- how do you find the pearls, the things that will make you better, smarter, more rounded? Where does Watergate get reported, and does anyone listen? Who points out that "airport security" is an oxymoron? Who writes some thought-provoking piece about the total energy expended making a hybrid car like mine? Who is speaking truth to power?

And who tells us that the wolf is, indeed, at the door?

In a world of ubiquitous "news", I fear the profession of journalism will become less a community of practice, and more a commons. With the tragedy being the likely reduction of economic value of professional journalism, playing out in salary reductions and layoffs of great journalists. I think being a journalist is a hard life -- if it doesn't pay, or if we don't have desks for them, will they write anyway? Or will they all become PR people at some major company?

I want everyone to write, to sing, to shout, to celebrate, to damn, to love, to mourn. I want everyone to do so publicly, or privately. I want them to share, or not. I want to live in a world filled with disparate voices.

And I want to be able to have a cup of coffee at Blue Jam on Melrose, reading a newspaper that helps me make sense of the Symphony of Humanity.

I want professional journalism: Not the CNN of today, but the CNN2 of yesterday.

With comics, of course.

Please leave the business section in the taxi so I can read it. And extra thanks for circling the good articles.

// Side note, 2: To all the physicists out there, a question. Does a Faraday cage cast an EMF shadow in the same way a lightning rod casts a lightning shadow? Thanks. //

A secret shared is a secret lost

2009-06-04T19:31:00.001-07:00

It’s always worth thinking about to whom you tell things, or let things slip, or let things be seen.

I’ve been around this block a time or two
And I’ve made some big mistakes, I promise you
-- Don Henley

For me, at least, pain erupts from my soul. Forcefully. Without control.

In contrast, betrayal is different. Slower somehow. Less directed.

It makes me think of getting a tattoo. When you get a tattoo, you lie down under a needle. It hurts. A lot. But afterwards you have a mark, a stain, a visible brand of something. (And hopefully it’s not a cartoon character on your butt, but that’s a different story.)

After you finish under the needle, tattoos, the big ones, anyway, ooze a clear fluid. It comes up out of each place the needle touched. It creeps out, silently filling the bandage, staining your clothes.

It lasts longer than the blood.

The clear ooze is as much a mark as the tattoo is. But it’s not as visible, as real, as honest.

Like betrayal.

Lately, I’ve been missing details, words, meanings… But it’s your essence I keep with me.
-- Jeanne, in an eerily prescient letter she wrote to me right before she moved to San Diego.

I’m supposed to be writing the last three pages of my book. These pages are easy, just a few sidebars on some interesting topics. The kind of stuff that erupts full blown like Athena from my forehead.

But I’m not expressing that content.

Nope, instead, I am drinking champagne, listening to heavy metal music, and thinking about JR.

June 23rd is coming.

I spent part of today cleaning up my files. I found all of Jeanne’s letters and cards to me.

I don’t recommend reading love letters near the anniversary of someone’s death. The experience is bizarre.

Almost unworldly, to hear her voice, her humor, her annoyance.

And then to turn up, next in the pile, her death certificate.

I don’t recommend it.

We’ve been through so much – I want you to remember me as brave & full of fight.
-- Jeanne, in her goodbye letter to me, written 10 days before she died.

I’m really supposed to be finishing the book. I promised Jim I’d do it in the next day or so.

That was yesterday I made that promise.

OK, I’ll go work on it next. I’m actually pretty excited about the book. I’ll tell you more about it over the next few weeks.

But I’m not going to finish it right now. I’m going to go sit outside, watch my dogs chase small ground animals, listen to the waterfall, and think of those loved, and lost, and found, and held.

Jeanne, I still hold your essence, and remember you as brave, full of vigor, and with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

And I know that Jeanne wouldn’t want me to wallow in self-pity. She thought that self-pity was the antithesis of bravery.

Maybe she’s right. I don’t know.

I have other things in my head, other than self-pity and regret. I have the now, and the future.

For example, SL lost her suitcase in New York. I know her suitcase held her favorite sweatshirt, a purse I bought her in Singapore, and a piece of jewelry I designed and had built for her.

She’s upset, and feels embarrassed and sloppy. She feels like she did something wrong.

I think it happens, and nobody died, so the harm is pretty limited.

But I think I’ll go buy SL a present, so she has something to open when she gets home. She’ll smile, and laugh, and maybe cry a bit.

It’s important to be here, in the now.

And then I’ll go write those last three pages.

See you all soon.

Happy brain-day to me

2009-05-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

And it's one more day up in the canyons,
And it's more more night in Hollywood
-- Counting Crows

Did you ever think that you'd end up living a lyric? There's no view from my house, up in the canyon, but my nights in Hollywood have been warm.

But the difference is language,
and just the bits that you got wrong
--The Streets

I miss my friend Guy. Hope your house renovation is going well, ours is almost done!

We are screaming inside,
we can't be heard
--Sarah McLachlan

SL and I sat at a restaurant the other day, having a glass of red wine, under the heaters, by the smoking section, with the backwash of friends resonating in our ears.

Overhead flew the Life Flight helicopter.

The sound reminds you that someone's life will never be the same. Or several people. A family. A tribe. A sect.

Never the same.

Just the sound.

You're on the road, but you've got no destination
You're in the mud, in the maze of her imagination
You love this town even if that doesn't ring true
-- U2

It was JR's birthday a couple of weeks ago. April 27th, for those of you playing the home game. My most-excellent coauthor (Jim) pinged me to offer his sympathies.

It must be hard for him, who knows so much of the story, to know what to say.

It is still hard for me to know what to say, and what not to say, and when to say it, and when not to.

Happy 48th birthday, Jeanne. Hope you are enjoying a beach somewhere, and a girlie vodka drink.

From the depths of the sea, back to the block
-- Snoop Dogg

Don't ask me to parallel park your car. Ask SL. She can park. She can fit a dump truck into a compact space.

It's very annoying.

I can't park a Prius in a football stadium.

We have even taken to switching from me driving to her driving, in the event parking is required.

She can get the car to fit in the space, guaranteed.

But I never hit those yellow posts that stand sentinel over the parking lots.

Ask her about the right rear quarter panel.

And then duck.

I'm just waiting ‘til the shine wears off
-- Coldplay

I use Twitter. And probably most of you do as well. It's clear the apocalypse is coming.

One of the bars I hang out at pushes twitter updates, regularly. CNN has breaking news via tweets.

There are some VERY surprising people following me. And my updates aren't that interesting. But they are remarkably like this blog entry.

When does the whole "rivers of blood" thing start?

I went on a horseback riding lesson last week. I'm ready.

And if you get that joke, go have (more) hot cocoa.

I run the marathon to the very last mile
Well if you battle me I will revile
People always say my style is wild
-- Beastie Boys

What is the deal with all the scooters in LA? Sitting at a red light at Barham and Cahuenga, listening to Lily Allen.

Just in front of me in queue are two scooters.

On my left, lane splitting to the front, another scooter.

In the intersection, turning left, yet another. Who was riding a brand-new scooter, in a brand new coat, with brand new boots that had no scuffs on them. Who didn't really know how to ride her scooter at all, but she looked very cute trying.

Are these the Horsemen? If so, I'm ready -- I even know how to shift gears, although I guess that’s unnecessary.

I don't have to fear it
I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
Then magnificently we will float into the mystic
--Van Morrison

SL and I rode to San Diego last week. The ride was glorious – sunny, warm, no traffic. Much of the ride is on the freeway, but along the ocean. Easy, fast, and pretty, all at the same time.

I haven’t been in San Diego in a long time. Specifically, the last time I was in San Diego was when BF and I went down to pack up Jeanne’s apartment after she got ill.

Packed up her apartment because we knew she’d never need it again.

We ended up loading up her car with dozens of boxes of stuff, and mailing more boxes of papers and clothes and what-have-you.

The boxes sat in my garage until after she died. It wasn’t fun sorting them then.

She had written me a letter. I found it in her papers. Kind of like that movie, about the guy who mails his wife letters to find after he dies?

SL and I took a side trip through north San Diego county. We rode through Encinitas, where Jeanne lived before we met. Jeanne took me to San Diego to show me her past. I took her to LA to show her mine.

SL and I passed the house that Jeanne and I made an offer to buy, before we changed our minds. We rode by the donut shop that Jeanne loved.

We rode past Jeanne’s office building, her apartment building, and the hospital where the first doctor told her she was going to die.

Poets, priests and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions
-- The Police

I went to church camp when I was younger, in Conway. Yes, I think it’s odd, too, but it is still true.

No, I don’t speak in tongues, thanks for asking.

No, I don’t handle snakes.

Really, enough religious questions. Back to my story.

At camp this year, we played a group game. It was called Killer. One of the group was the killer, but nobody knew who it was. She (or he) “killed” people by winking at them as the game progressed.

If you were killed, you went off to the side of the area. Eventually, someone figured out who was the killer, and the game ended.

The killer was selected from the group in a clever way. The entire group huddled around, with their eyes closed, and their hands in the middle of the huddle. The last killer reached out – blindly – and tapped another person’s hand. That person in turn reached out – also blindly – and tapped another hand. The owner of that second hand became the killer for that round, in a literal case of the blind leading the blind (folded).

Now, let’s try not to make Calvary jokes about a church camp celebrating a killing. Nor let us make Deliverance jokes, although Arkansas does make one think about them.

And, for God’s sake, no pun intended, let’s not dwell on the irony of a church camp teaching a game about killing.

The final round of the game was the night before we broke camp for home. That “killer” was going to have to make it through the next day and all the way home on the bus without getting caught.

I was that killer. And, through a complicated process, it soon became clear to everyone that I was Jack-the-Ripper-in-the-Blood-of-the-lamb.

Since everyone knew it was me, I should have gotten caught, yes? But no. In a group-think exercise, everyone decided that they should try to get me to kill them. An early suicide cult, if you will, with everyone acting out their inner death wish.

So I responded in the only way possible: I refused to kill anyone.

Truly I come to bring peace, not the sword.

My mother had a vision
and I was found
-- Marc Cohn

Take a look around you, the next time you are in public. Find the guys in the chino pants, with dark shoes and ill-fitting shirts.

They are computer consultants, come to sell you a new database.

Run away.

I have a tale to tell,
Sometimes it gets so hard to hide it well
-- Madonna

Vic is graduating from school this month. A strong clean-up hitter, with a good slugging percentage. Way to go, Vic.

25 years and my life is still
Trying to get up that
Great big hill of hope
-- 4 Non Blondes

Happy Brain-day to me, later this week.

In the last 2 minutes, you gotta let your quarterback call the plays

2009-04-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

OK, so the tagline on this blog refers to things you just passed in a taxi.

Seriously, have you ever tried to catch a cab in LA? Other than the Roosevelt, and LAX, where are the taxis?

I may have to change the tag.

I can smell machinery
--Thomas Dolby

SL & I watched the final episode of "Saving Grace" the other night (spoiler alert). I don't know how you feel about the death penalty. I am conflicted. In the abstract, I think I'm ok with it. However, in the specific, I always fall against it. I'm apparently inconsistent.

As the guards came to get Leon Cooley and take him to the execution chamber, SL let out a gasp, and said "But wait! He didn't get to finish his last meal! Wait! Please!"

She's right. He didn't.

It sucks to run out of time to do something. Jeanne ran out of time before she got to go to Paris. I ran out of time to whisper in her ear.

I'm going to try and make time. I'm riding to Death Valley next week. Baby steps, folks, baby steps.

Mystery is a thing not easily captured
--Dan Fogelberg

My nephew (more or less) stayed with us for several days this week. He spent a lot of his time playing Halo 3. We also visited pretty much every amusement park in Southern California, but that's not relevant at the moment.

When I played Halo, I was totally focused on the mission; I didn't do anything that didn't lead to the goal of the game. I wouldn't even bother shooting the bad guys that I didn't need to; if they weren't in my way, I just went past them.

My nephew played totally differently. He wandered around aimlessly. He kicked downed bad guys to see what happened -- did you know the shells pop off of the little bad guys if you shoot them after they are dead? Me neither. He wandered around the rooms, exploring, searching for nothing in particular.

It was so random that I found it frustrated to watch -- I kept wanting to hurry him up, get him through the next checkpoint, to win the game. He was having a great time, but making slow progress towards the finish. But he understood the game way better than I did. He noticed details like the way ammunition changed if you picked up a second weapon. He found a way through a hard room by clambering through the pipes. He found strange inexplicable behaviors that must have been added to the game as a joke.

He was remarkably good at the game. It makes me think about the educational value of games. I studied it at RAND. One of my oldest friends has a book arguing that gamers make better employees and generally debunking the notion that computer games are intrinsically bad for kids.

One of the features commented on by Mitchell, and in loads of research, is that exploration is a good way to learn (assuming you get feedback on mistakes quickly enough). My nephew's strategy gave him a great understanding of the game, and I should have been able to predict that it would.

And yet, I can't play the game in that manner. I've become totally goal focused. Is it a side effect of growing older? Or a learned behavior from corporate jobs? I wonder.

Shut up and put your money where your mouth is.
That's what you get for waking up in Vegas.
--Katy Perry

I spent Easter weekend with a friend in Phoenix. We went to see Jeanne. We argued about international finance. We went to mass.

He said "Practice Electra,
you might need me someday"
--Megan Slankard

The Easter homily was heartbreaking. The priest told a story of a close friend of his who died of pancreatic cancer at a very young age. (Hmm, similarities?)

As the friend was coming to the end of her personal novel, the priest took her on vacation for a weekend in the country at a house in the mountains. Saturday night, before they left to return to the city, she stood outside, unaware that he was behind her.

She thanked the mountains for being so beautiful. She thanked the stars for twinkling. She thanked the river.

She told them all "I'll probably never see you again, but I wanted to thank you for my life".

She died a few days later.

I can see my life before me
Running rings around the way it used to be
--Crosby, Stills, and Nash

My weekend in Phoenix was fun and diverting. "Nothing" came of it - I didn't get tan, I didn't read any new books, I didn't learn anything.

But sometimes the joy is in the act, not the goal. My nephew reminded me of that, through a very violent first-person shooter game. The homily reminded me of it.

One can learn from the strangest things.

Don't run out of time. Eat the meal you are offered. Thank the stars. Ride through Death Valley, fearing no evil.

Have a good taxi ride, if you can find one.

Tap dancing on the precipice of irony

2009-03-28T17:50:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning
And now I understand
What it means to give your life
to just one man
--Sheryl Crow, "Home"

(First, I understand that Eitan and the rest of the Associate Crew @ the Big G in the sky are disappointed that I haven't posted more often. Sorry, working on it now, will do better!)

Today's post is a non sequitur.

It turns out that there are some folks who read my blog and internalized one thing: They learned that I don't like travel.

Although that may be true, it's a bit like reading "Lord of the Flies" and deciding it's about how to build a campfire.

I'm just saying.

Did you know when you go,
It's the perfect ending
to the bad day
I'd gotten used to spending
--Sheryl Crow, "My Favorite Mistake"

Has anyone seen the movie Jaws?

2009-01-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

I hate being afraid.

Come on baby,
don't fear the reaper.
Baby take my hand.
Don't fear the reaper.
We'll be able to fly...
--Blue Oyster Cult

Well, I ride motorcycles -- I even raced them a few times, although I never won. I drive fast cars -- and, ditto on the racing, and, unfortunately, on the losing. I like to ski, and love the rush of a hard turn on a steep slope.

I love horror movies, and haunted houses. I've got a tradition with my friend Raven. He and I have been going to haunted houses every year for the past decade or so, although he or I missed at least one of the past few years. (This year he skipped, on account of his back. Sorry dude.)

I can swim just fine, although I don't particularly like it. But I was on the swim team a few centuries ago, and can still swim a fair distance. I don't have fish issues. I used to surf, although (a theme develops), I wasn't any good at it.

So, really, how hard can snorkeling be? It's sticking your face in the water, breathing through a funny-looking tube, and watching fish.

Boring, maybe, but scary?

Well, fearless reader, I turn out to be a fearful writer.

Yup, I hated it. Couldn't breathe, the whole flipper thing confused me, and I had a full-fledged panic attack. I couldn't remember not to breathe through my nose, which causes a weird mask-and-brain thing to happen. The flipping snorkel -- no pun intended -- kept filling with water.

Aargh.

SL who isn't afraid of much of anything (annoyingly, as usual) is, of course, a great snorkeler, and really loves it. And doesn't have panic attacks in the water.

Don't pay the Ferryman!
Don't even fix a price.
--Chris de Burgh

Luckily for me, she was paying attention, and got me calmed down and back in the boat. The boat didn't have a swim platform, so to get back on it, you had to clamber up over the side. As I executed this graceless maneuver, on my way back into the boat, I managed to slice my foot on the (turned off) outboard motors.

So, now I'm sitting in the boat, embarrassed AND bleeding. Yay for my side.

I guess I never knew
What she was talking about
-Jackson Browne

According to SL, my reaction isn't unusual. And, she says, the conditions weren't very good. There were 3 foot waves and a fairly high wind. She says I'd have been fine on a calm day, and that I have nothing to be ashamed of.

But I hate being scared.

Michelle, next time you go snorkeling, maybe take SL with you? I hear that it's cool to see fish...

Me? I'll be reading something stupid, on my new Kindle (thanks John!), on the shore. I'll be reveling in my lack of mouth-breathing. I'll be feeling the sand beneath my feet -- and, yes, I hate sand too. But, as least the mask won't be screwing up my tan lines.

Today's word? Arrhythmic.

You keep it up
You try so hard
To keep a life from coming apart
And never know
The shallows and the unseen reefs
That are there from the start
--Jackson Browne

As in, my heartbeat felt arrhythmic.

Or, in the sense of "unsteady": Apparently, my courage is arrhythmic.

But I know that when she asks me to do it again, I will. I mean, what's the worst thing that can happen. Umm, never mind, I don't want to know.

Anyone got a spare motorcycle helmet? I hate being afraid.

Free association, Free range chicken, Freetown....

2008-12-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

It's a brave new world of OtherEnder prose. Tonight, the soul of wit is indeed brevity.

My brother's IM status message refers to "Now, with more red blood cells". You may find that odd.

Finding it odd, you may ask, "Douglas. how do you find his status message?"

And I might answer, with a smirk, "Why, I find it in my Adium contact list".

Regardless, I know the context that yielded my brother's message, but even with context, I find it unusual.

In my contact pane.

I'm your turbo lover,
Tell me there's no other.
--Judas Priest

Don't those lyrics touch you? Touch you, kind of like a medical exam that involves a rubber glove. Moving right along...

I feel like I'm on the set of Rain Man right now
--SL, regarding my behavior at dinner

I forgot a word today. Yes, all of you who know me are having conniptions at the moment. I forgot a word. At dinner.

And I spent the next two hours of my vacation -- two hours I will never get back, two hours that took me closer to death -- trying to recall the word.

Foiled, like a rat, I spent the time trying to remember the word. Failing that, I started free associating.

Listening to me free associate is quite scary, although occasionally illuminating.

For example, speaking of illumination, I discussed Fresnel lenses.

I also got trapped in a little swirl of religious artifacts -- and, related, religious artifice.

SL noticed not only that I was annoying, but also that there are a lot more -phobe words than -phile words.

Doesn't it say something about us that we have more fears than likes?

The word I couldn't remember? Luddite.

How appropriate.

Love's lessons learned

2008-12-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

Just a song before I go
To whom it may concern.
-- Crosby, Stills, and Nash

I don't have much time to write this evening -- I am 3 chapters behind, and my faithful but... well, faithful .... coauthor is being, umm... faithful. So I need to get some writing done.

I'm in a hotel, in cloudy London, on another 36 hour trip. Arriving back at my room, I chanced upon an article in this morning's Daily Telegraph.

Many wise and caring people have different views on assisted suicide. I may be neither wise nor caring, but I do have a strong view on this topic.

I was blessed: Jeanne died still with her mind and soul intact. Her greatest fear was that she'd die "badly".

Well, actually, her greatest fear was that I'd be traveling when she died. But I was there...

And she didn't die badly. She was strong, brave, and amazing until the end.

And, well, I guess she still is, but, again, you may feel differently.

However, we did talk about plans for if she wanted her Final Exit to be on her terms. In the US, like many countries, that choice is unavailable, illegal, or logistically challenging.

Read the article, tell me what you think. Or, better still, tell someone you love.

Happy holidays.

She finally looked at me in love
and then she was gone.
--Crosby, Stills, and Nash

Exit, stage left

2008-11-27T14:29:00.000-08:00

First of all, let me start off by thanking British Airways for having gluten-free bread that I could eat with jam and some butter-like spread. Very nice surprise for me.

I'm flying back from the Roadshow From Hell (hereafter, referred to as RFH). In about 3 weeks, we did presentations in London, NY, LA, Tokyo, Paris, Milan and Cologne. Doesn't sound so hard when written out, but believe me it was very hard while doing it. I'm extremely tired, and my brain is no longer working too well. More on that later.

I'm not sure why, but long flights make me depressed. I spent the first few hours listening to a greatest hits compilation of Bruce Springsteen music. Given a predilection for depression, this is a poor choice of music.

Do you ever let your lover see the Stranger in yourself
-- Billy Joel

I know I said I wouldn't write so much about Jeanne... but I don't think I promised I wouldn't!

I'm starting to forget things about Jeanne. I can't remember her eyes, the way they crinkled at the corners when she laughed. The way she lilted her voice when she was "talking" to the dogs. Or which was her favorite pair of boots.

And even more terrifying, I had trouble remembering her birthdate. I remember what I did for her for the last birthday, and how much she liked her birthdays with me, but I couldn't remember the date. In fact, I'm going to have to check to make sure what I remember is correct.

Dates are the kind of thing I remember. Maybe I'm just tired? Or maybe I'm getting old, and my famed powers of memory are fading?

Now all them things that seemed so important
well mister they just vanished right into the air.
Now I just act like I don't remember,
Mary acts like she don't care.
--Bruce Springsteen

I'm abnormally afraid of getting old. I don't want to give up my passion, my energy, my hopes for growth. I'm not ready to be... stagnant. Or is that really being content?

They all live out in the suburbs,
where their dreams are in their children at play
--Mary-Chapin Carpenter

I listen to songs about family and children, and instead of hearing hope, I hear nothing but wistfulness and a feeling of loss. Are people indeed more content in their children than they were before? How do people become more content with your partner after there are no secrets or surprises left?

Now those memories come back to haunt me
they haunt me like a curse.
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true?
-Bruce Springsteen

I've never been especially good at commitment. Yes, yes, I know, that's a bit of an understatement. But I've decided to work on it. I'm reading books, thinking, talking... and, yes, writing about it.

SL wants to have children, and I am getting myself there. I wonder if I will be a good father, or if I'll be the kind of father that hides at the office with scarcely concealed annoyance with the "rugrats".

I never married Jeanne, and I never told her she was my life. When she first got sick, before we knew she was going to die, I told her I'd be with her until she got well.

I meant that she didn't need to fear being sick and alone -- she had that experience earlier in her life, and it scarred her.

But that's not what she wanted to hear from me. As soon as I said that, she would respond "what about after I get well?" I never answered, I just smiled. Because I wanted to have one foot out the door, all the time.

Would she have gotten well if I had told her I'd be with her? I don't really believe that, but I still wish I had said so.

And, even more, I wish I hadn't had one foot out the door.

SL, my feet are both inside, and the door is locked.

(Sidenote: my new house has a set of electronic locks. I can't figure out how to open them. Thus, even if wanted to have one foot out the door, I couldn't manage it.)

It's Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for a lot. My friends, my fiancee, and those in my past who have loved me -- even those I have lost or who have lost me.

Go hug someone, and tell them they are your life. And hug your kids.

And, if you feel like it, reassure me that I can keep both feet inside. I'm planning on it.

Today's emotion? Annoyance...

2008-11-26T01:07:00.000-08:00

Every now and again, I am blown away by security measures that make it impossible to get anything done.

Well, let's bungle in the jungle
--Jethro Tull

I won't, for the moment, go into the airport security person this morning at Heathrow who told me my carry on bag wouldn't fit. Despite the fact I carried in onto the flight that brought me to Heathrow 12 hours ago. Not to mention the 7 flights I've carried it onto in the past 10 days. Whatever, he let me "carry it, just this once." Thanks, dude.

Nope, this story of security-made-screw-ity is courtesy of that financial giant, PayPal.

Background, I've used the same credit card as my primary means of payment for more than a decade. I've bought a lot of things on that card -- in fact, I have the card details memorized.

Additional context: I've spent the last 4 weeks on a hellish roadshow, going all over the world, and getting far too little sleep. As many of you know, when I don't sleep well, I start forgetting things.

Apparently, at some point on this journey, I left my Kindle e-book reader in a hotel.

Oh, I'm SO bummed about this. I bought it on the first day they became available and got it overnighted to me. I have been a religious user since then, and have -- had -- about 30 books on it when I lost it.

Did I mention I'm bummed about losing it?

So, I hopped onto Amazon.com to order a new one... but they are sold out for the next 3 months. I placed an order, of course, but I don't want to wait that long -- I have a vacation coming up and don't want to have to carry a load of heavy books.

AARGH!

But wait, there is Pierre's gift to mankind, Ebay. Surely someone will be selling a Kindle on Ebay?

And, by the way, which one's Pink?
--Pink Floyd

Yea, verily, there are a few for sale, including a couple that have "buy it now" and same day shipping. I can make it work, I can get my books back!

(Note, I have no idea how to get all my purchases back onto the new Kindle, nor how to reshuffle the content to get the stuff I'm reading onto the Kindle and the older stuff off -- I keep the Kindle full of stuff I am currently reading, not stuff I've read -- and there is some possibility that Amazon won't let me register a new device, etc. But that's a problem for another day!)

OK, now I spend a few minutes checking prices and shipping locations, reading seller feedback, and deciding that it's worth doing a "Buy It Now" option rather than waiting for the auctions to end.

Find one I like, and click "buy it now"... and am told that I need an Ebay account to pay. OK, this should be fine. I enter my details (email, address, etc). And get an error message.

Apparently, I've got an Ebay account tied to my GMail account. Seems unlikely, but... silicon doesn't lie (ask Pam Anderson...)

Hmm, stumped momentarily, I remember a GMail trick. You can add "+" to your GMail address, and put anything you like after the plus. Gmail ignores the stuff after the "+", but the address looks unique. Theoretically, you can filter based on this trick, but I haven't tried. However, I needed a "unique" address, so I filled in my GMail address followed by "+EbayStupidity".

And it worked. Yay!

So, back to bidding -- I wasted 10 minutes on that Ebay administrative garbage, I'm even MORE motivated to get my Kindle.

And the next banana peel is thrown under my feet: I can only pay with PayPal.

OK, sigh, create a PayPal account. Fill in my address, email, and credit card details AGAIN.

And get another error message "You can't have an account with the same email or credit card as an existing account". I assume this is to prevent fraud, although it's stupid.

The email field is marked in red, so I assume I have an account on my GMail address -- again, I don't remember so, but if I have an Ebay account on that address, it's likely I have a PayPal account as well. Smirking at my cleverness, I fill in my address "+PayPalisREALLYStupid" as my email address....

And get the error again. Apparently I used that credit card of mine in some distant past.

Sigh, so I pull out another card that I don't use for online purchases and enter those details.

Did I mention that I don't use it for purchases online? Oh well, it's PayPal, they won't leak my data, yes?

Anyway, at first it gets declined -- for no obvious reason. So I reenter the data, and it takes. Yay! Give me my Kindle!

But, no, there's another step -- I have to become "PayPal verified". Which requires, apparently, linking my account to my bank account.

The irony, of course, being that I used my bank account debit card as my new credit card, but whatever.

I dutifully pull out my check book to enter the details into PayPal. Sheep like, I march down the path to the virtual fleecing point, just to get my Kindle.

By now, by the way, I've almost forgotten what I was trying to buy.

I finally finish putting in my bank information from my check book. And lo, the light appears at the end of the tunnel.

But it's an onrushing train.

I have to verify the checking account, by going online to find some transaction, or by waiting three days for some other verification method. I don't have online access to my bank account -- that I know of -- and I don't have any idea how the "three day verification method" is going to work.

OK, I give up. I'm beaten. I can't figure this all out.

I bail on the purchase.

I wanted to give the seller a healthy chunk of money. I wanted to give Ebay some revenue share of that money, and I wanted to give PayPal transaction revenue.

But they won't let me.

In the name of "security", they have made my money obscure.

Ridiculous. Really. Fraud detection is good, yes, but making it impossible to buy anything is worse.

What's your stock price again, Ebay-post-Meg?

At any rate, I'm sitting in the lounge at Heathrow, with nothing to read, annoyed, and hoping my new Kindle arrives in time for Valentine's Day...

And, yes, the best shopping system on the Intertubes, Google Checkout, doesn't seem to have any Kindles for sale. And Ebay doesn't take Checkout, as far as I can tell.

You can't always get what you want
--Rolling Stones

Anybody want to loan me their PayPal account so I can buy my replacement Kindle before I kindle into flames? Feel free to leave the details on the seat of the taxi that I am taking home from the airport.

I’ll take the call on the extension phone in the hall, please.

2008-11-20T02:56:00.000-08:00

I never meant to be
So bad to you
--Asia

Hello again, my OtherEnders. It’s been a long time, I know. I’m sorry. I’ve missed you.

I have an excuse, however, for why it’s been so long. Actually, I have two excuses. Or maybe three.

First, most of my creativity has been going into my book – and my coauthor is very pleased to see me carrying my own weight… for a change. Second, I’ve been working like a dog – I’m on my way to my 4th continent in 7 days, just to give you a picture.

But the real reason? I’m not sure what to say.

I always read your grief blog
--Q

Q’s statement brought me up short. It was, actually, a compliment from him – and he’s probably the best, most literate writer I know. So a compliment from him is a bit like having an Army Ranger tell you that you are brave. But it made me realize that I had stopped writing, and was just emoting.

You had a blog before JR got sick,
and you should have one again
--SL

She’s right, my blog wasn’t originally about grief. I wrote about funny stuff like hats-through-epaulets in India, and loads about airport semi-security.

I was very proud every time a post made JR laugh, or my best friend giggle. I am still proud when SL laughs – although usually the humor is dark these days, so she’s laughing her way through the graveyard, if you will allow me to make that pun.

I'd lost something precious
but God will save me from losing myself.
(....)
I think I know what's wrong.
Pushing the needle too far
-Indigo Girls

Ironically enough, I never understood the Indigo Girls song I just quoted. I liked it, but the image didn’t come clear to me. I have decided the lyric refers to an injection needle, and using it too much. For those of you who know me well, you recognize the irony of not seeing that image clearly. Sometimes you miss with the needle, and all kinds of havoc ensue. And sometimes you rely on the needle more than you should, and disaster reigns about you.

I think about Jeanne almost every day. I hear a song she liked, or play one of the CDs she made me for my birthday, or see a slight blonde woman with a crooked smile, and tears come to my eyes. I think that always shall be my response.

Did I ever tell you that SL wrote a blog post as if it was a letter from Jeanne to me? It was amazingly well written – SL got some of Jeanne’s “voice” right. And it still makes me cry.

And that my childhood friend M sent me a letter telling me about family members of hers who undoubtedly helped Jeanne carry her suitcases of shoes into the Promised Land. I’ve been blessed with so many friends who have helped me carry this burden for the past few years.

But it’s possible that I am out of stories I want to express now. My heart’s wound may have gotten cleansed. A clean wound will heal, but it doesn’t happen immediately. In fact, some clean wounds never heal. But a wound that has debris, or bits of the weapon, or infection will never heal. The medical term is “debridement”. Literally, removing debris from a wound – could be bits of flesh from a burn, or other foreign matter in the wound – with the hope that the clean wound will heal without infection.

Chase all the ghosts from your head
I'm stronger than the monster beneath your bed
-Indigo Girls

This blog, and all of you, helped me clean the wound that JR’s loss caused. The wound isn’t healed – and I hope it never does heal – but it’s not infected anymore.

We are, indeed, stronger than the monster. It’s still there, and it still talks to me in the dark of the night. It tells me I didn’t love her enough, or wasn’t good enough to her… or for her. It whispers that I should be mourning more deeply and shouldn’t be laughing or loving. It laughs at my sadness when I see the priest who gave her last rites… but hasn’t spoken to me since, and seems somehow disapproving.

Sometimes it is truly horrible: It reminds me that I didn’t get Jeanne to go get checked for cancers that commonly followed her medical condition… leaving me to realize that she died, in part, because of my negligence.

I heard its nails scratching on the door to the Danville house as I closed it for the last time, and I feel its warm breath, and smell brimstone, when my Dalmatian looks like she is ill.

In one of my favorite children’s fantasy novels, there is the notion that when you name someone – their true name, the truth of their essence – they have no more power over you. So people guard their true names with all their strength.

I don’t yet know the monster’s name, but I have a suspicion. And that suspicion keeps it at bay… it’s afraid I’m right as well.

And I shall continue to search for its name.

She wouldn’t want you to act this way
--Car Pool Pal

So where does this leave us? It leaves me happy with SL, living in LA in a new house that has no ghosts. Ironically enough, given for whom the house was built, it seems to be ghost free.

Jeanne knows where I am. And, I hope, loves me and is happy for me. I donate time and money to Best Friends Animal Shelter, her favorite charity. I ask my friends to do likewise – every time I help save an animal, I think of the adoption fair we worked together, and how we were competing for getting the most animals adopted, and how she smiled at me for pushing so hard to “sell” the dogs.

And I think of how I called Best Friends in Utah after she died to make sure they got her life insurance money. They had, but hadn’t gotten the bequest notation… so they didn’t know why the money had come.

And I smile. In a slightly wan way, but it’s a smile, nonetheless

I never thought I had more to give
You’re pushing me so far
Here I am without you.
Drink to all we have lost
Mistakes we have made.
Everything will change,
Mistakes we have made.
Everything will change,
but love remains the same
--Gavin Rossdale

So let’s see what happens now. It’s possible that I have no muse left to write with, or need to express what’s inside, or even an audience to engage. I may have nothing left to say, and it’s possible that the OtherEndofSunset was just death, not a sunrise at all.

I guess we shall see. I’m going to write differently. My posts will be shorter – I won’t write a novella each time. I’ll probably go back to liberal use of sarcasm and irony. I might even (gasp) talk about technology or music.

Well, I doubt that, but it’s possible, I guess.

I think I will model the new incarnation after Cory’s blog – short posts, no overly crafted prose, but very compelling. And I’ll try to post more often.

You may recall that this blog is views of somewhere you just passed in a taxi.

I’ve spent a lot of time in taxis over the past weeks. In Tokyo, taxi doors have automatic openers – you walk up to the cab and the rear door opens, as if there were an invisible butler there. However, naturally, as always when you use technology for its own sake, as opposed to solving a real problem, there’s a side effect.

You can’t close the door yourself, nor is it easy to reopen if you want to get out. Truly, you are trapped, like a squid in a dryer.

If we decide that the taxi view, the new blog, is not compelling, I’ll stop writing. I won’t keep you trapped in the taxi. I’ll just let the OtherEndofSunset die. But let’s see, shall we?

And meanwhile, please help that nice woman into her taxi, her bag looks heavy.

Trapped, squid-like, in a dryer

2008-09-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

And I will try to connect
all the pieces you left.
I will carry it on,
and let you forget.
--Dixie Chicks

Have you ever watched yourself be really sick? I mean, really, watched yourself be ill. I have.

You might see yourself in a seedy, dirty-covered mirror in a bathroom in the middle of somewhere you never thought you'd be. Or you might see yourself in the words of a song, or a book, or a story.

Or you might see yourself, being very ill, in the eyes of a loved one, a friend, a fan.

Regardless, in that moment of stark clarity, you see it all. You see how you got here, you see where you are going.

And sometimes the journey isn't what you imagined.

And I'll remember the years...
when laughter and life
filled up this silent house
--Dixie Chicks

Today is the last day I will ever likely spend in this bright house in the East Bay.

The house where I met her, marking branches on the pine trees in the backyard with little red pieces of yarn. And how happy she was that I talked to her about it, with only a small amount of humor.

The house I came home to when she called me to tell me she had cancer.

The house where we sat on the back patio and argued about Elton John lyrics.

The house where she told me she loved me.

The house where she died.

And it's been a while
since I first saw you.
--Staind

I've come back here to say goodbye, again, but for real this time. I am sitting in the house, alone and silent, trying to feel her presence in the walls.

The house has no noise, no movement, nothing but ghosts now. The only sound is the scrabbling of my fingernails against the keyboard. And the sound of my tears.

Why must I feel this way?
Just make this go away
Just one more peaceful day
--Staind

I couldn't figure out how to say goodbye, so SL made a great suggestion -- go to each room, and sit and think about that room and the memories in that room.

So, let's walk, shall we? Do watch your step, that's fresh blood.

Let's start in the heart of a house -- the kitchen. In the kitchen, where she used her little Mac to play games and to email with me. When I bought her a new mac with a camera, she figured out how to use the camera to take a picture of herself and emailed it to me.

She was so proud of herself, in that little grey and pink button up sweater she wore, and her face so yellow with jaundice. But the smile was real, and was for me. For something she could share with me. Perhaps the last thing, she feared.

SL and I went through the kitchen stuff a few months ago -- dishes, pots, pans, and the random stuff that accumulates in your kitchen over time. I appreciated the help getting that task done. Kitchens are a part of family -- you spend your life in a kitchen with your family, either birth family or chosen one.

Moving out of the kitchen, let's move into the front hall. One time when Jeanne was in New York on business, I was out one night doing something, can't remember what. We kept our dogs in an "ex-pen" in the front hall while we were out, so that our Dalmatian wouldn't chew. Somehow, the Dal managed to turn the water on in the prep sink there in the hall, and had flooded the entire ground floor of the house. The dogs had worked together to slide the ex-pen over to the stairs, and they were huddled on the bottom stair to keep from getting wet. Tyrone was crying his little brown eyes out... in fact, as I walked up the path to the door, I heard him yelping and thought that he'd gotten hurt, they'd had a fight, something. So I came rushing in the door... to step in 3 inches of water.

Squelch.

OK, get dogs, send them upstairs to dry off, warm up, and generally be less annoying. Mop floor, call insurance agent... and then call Jeanne. Luckily she didn't mind me waking her up at 1 in the morning or so.

The next weekend, we noticed that all the tiles were loose in the hall, so we spent a fun day popping them off the concrete in preparation for the faux wood floor that lives there now.

Into the living room, where the parties always are.

There's a TV on the wall of this room. An old friend installed it for me -- when he bid the project for me, I told him he had to work only at certain hours, and the like, because Jeanne was ill and needed her rest. By the time he came to install it, she was dead. So I told him he could work whenever he wanted to.

He stumbled over his tongue trying to tell me he was sorry. I walked away in the middle of his sentence, and it never came up again between us.

The same living room where I told her I didn't believe in marriage anymore. The look in her eyes as she thought through it, and decided that I was worth it, even if she didn't get to marry me.

Such big mistakes made in such a small, nondescript room.

Now let's go up the stairs, perhaps starting in the master bedroom. She had a game -- the question game -- that she loved to play at night. She'd ask me random questions, to get me to talk. I never asked her any back. And, I got really annoyed at her for the game, and snapped at her, one night after months of this. I felt like I was getting the third degree, like she was looking for some failure in my past. She teared up, and never played again.

It wasn't until months later that she told me that the game was just so she could get to know every bit of me, and that she wasn't judging, at all. She just wanted to be nestled inside my skin.

That was her goal, and I yelled at her.

Down the upstairs hallway to what is now the dogs' room. Lots of great memories of SL and I putting the dogs away and playing with them there. It's also where my elliptical trainer lives... which isn't such a good memory, I guess.

When Jeanne was alive, that room was our office. It was piled high with random papers and computers and compact discs in the wrong cases. It was anarchy. She thrived on chaos, and couldn't be bothered to be organized. She was an artist who decided to be an executive, because being an artist wasn't a "real job" and she always had to be in a real job.. not for herself, but for someone else. Until she internalized that rule, and decided not to follow her artistic dreams.

There's something sad when an old gambler gives up the dice.
--Heinlein

The year she got sick, we moved the office downstairs and made that into a guest room. I can't remember why, now, but it seemed smart at the time. We made the now ex-office into a guest room, very neat and tidy, with a clock and a bedside lamp, and grandmother's handmade quilts on the bed.

That was where her mother slept... only during the day, so she could sit at Jeanne's side all night long, every night, holding her hand, helping her do whatever needed to be done in the dark of the night.

I wonder what became of those quilts.

And, finally, we get to the end room. It's the guest room now, and the closet is filled with SL's overflow clothes. But, to me, it smells of antiseptic and liquid ativan and fear and doubt. I don't even like going in there. Every time I do, I see her lying there, on the bed, dead.

Or even worse, I see her lying there, dying, but super excited to see me and smiling as big as she could, her teeth white against her skin.

I couldn't help her. I didn't know what to do. And I still don't, so let's leave this room, quickly.

Back down to the living room, with the painting on the wall that she bought from the friend of that evil weirdo she knew in HR. The same painting that SL fell into one afternoon as we were laughing and dancing around.

The painting that reminds me of a prison cell, with some sunshine flowing through the window, and clipped out pictures of hope in the form of flowers, with a count of years scratched into the wall. The unknown criminal who scrawled the years woke up every day in that cell and realized that another day had passed in prison, and that another was to come.

I call the painting "I'm still here", because there is still hope, sunshine, and flowers, even in the darkest places.

Sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight.
--Goo Goo Dolls

2008-08-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

Hello my (remaining) OtherEnders.

Many of you have asked why I haven't posted in a long time. The answer is, no surprise, complicated.

There is the easy stuff -- I've been slammed at work, traveling too much, and trying to focus on my book (much to my coauthor's surprise).

But I also feel like I've lost my voice. I have blogging laryngitis.

So rather than try to give a speech, let me give an anecdote.

The day you left, you got an early start
(...)
I opened the door to your room down the hall
I turned on the light
And all that I saw
Was a bed and a desk and couple of tacks
No sign of someone who expects to be back
--Mary-Chapin Carpenter

I'm lucky enough to be moving to LA, along with SL. That's great, and the new house is cool, and I love LA.

However, it also means I'm leaving the house I shared with Jeanne.

I've seen your face a hundred times
Everyday we've been apart
--Ozzy Osbourne

We are moving in several pieces, for various timing reasons, but we just finished the first part. We had people come and load a truck for us.

Two men I didn't know carried sealed boxes down the stairs, one by one, and out the front door.

Just like the two men I didn't know who carried a bag, zipped up, with her in it, down the stairs, and out the front door.

It should have been easier by three
our old friend fear and you and me
--Bush

Every box I pack feels like I'm killing her. She's dying, again. And it hurts as much this time as it did last.

I am very glad I have SL in my life, I'm thankful for my friends and those that support me. And for you, my readers, as well. But I haven't forgotten.

The old buzzard was wrong.

Get this party started on a Saturday night
Everybody's waitin' for me to arrive
Sendin' out the message to all of my friends
-Pink

Jeanne made me a set of CDs for a present once, including her favorite songs. One of which was that Pink tune. More OtherEnd soon, I promise, and on brighter topics.

Give the next taxi to someone who needs it, a bit more than you.

There is a season, turn, turn, turn...

2008-06-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,
and think of you.
Caught up in circles,
confusion is nothing new
Flashback--warm nights--
almost left behind;
suitcases of memories….
--Cyndi Lauper

Two years ago this last week, I lost my beloved Jeanne. And I just lost the last link in my life that connected me to her. How does one mourn the passing of a blog? Is it like mourning a person? I don’t know, but, as of this week, AC is gone.

It’s ok, I can’t blame BF for shutting down AC. I’ve often considered ending this blog, marking it as completed. Well, not completed, I’ll never stop grieving for Jeanne, but perhaps marked as having reached a local maximum. And, of course, I’m supposed to be writing a book – I am sure my coauthor and editor would prefer I spent my time writing chapters rather than writing posts.

But I still have more to say, I think.

But the passing of AC makes me sad, sitting here in cold, rainy London. Once again, my mood matches the weather. One wonders if the weather causes the moods, or, perhaps vice versa. I’m just joking, by the way. Even though I’m sometimes described as compelling, I don’t think my bad mood can cause rain. Of course, my moods reign supreme, but that’s another matter.

Here’s to you, AC. May the path rise up to meet your feet, and may you always feel the blend of creation and invention that drives you.

Being married seems to be having someone who will slap your enemies or help you clean up body parts
--Bones

And a brief shout-out to Robert Mugabe – thanks for casting your basket over the light that was the nascent vestiges of democracy in Zimbabwe. I am, indeed, vicariously responsible, as are all of us who didn’t, or don’t, stand up to protest injustice. Not saying that my country doesn’t have great, terrible injustices, by the way. I’m just sad at the developments in that part of Africa, with such great physical beauty and such wonderful citizens.

To wit, our friend J. Several of us went out on my ski boat a few weeks ago. It was a lovely, hot day, and the water was totally empty of other boats. Very cool. However, it turns out you really don’t want to drive the boat over the rope you use to tow the inner tube. Yes, I knew that already, and no I wasn’t paying attention. Yes, I drove the boat squarely over the rope. Yes, the propeller got caught, cut the rope, and wound the end around the driveshaft. No, the prop didn’t fall off.

After an appropriate screamed warning from one of the boat guests, I killed the boat engine, and we drifted, lazily, towards the side of the channel. And went aground on the rocks. Sigh. Another day, another scratch in the clear coat seal. That’s ok, it was my fault, nobody to blame.

But someone has to go under the boat to unwrap the rope. Was it me? Nope, it was J, from Zimbabwe, swimming under to pull us free and rescue us from the clutches of the Delta rocks.

I didn’t want to swim under, but would have. It is, however, nice not to have to do something you don’t want to do. It’s like having a support system. Well, I guess it is having a support system, now that I think about it. At any rate, thanks J!

Do you often think of suicide?
--Bones

// Side note: I’m trying to expand beyond song lyrics in my side notes. It’s a new challenge. Hope you like it. If not, make a suggestion… //

// Side note, 2: Google Analytics is cool. Apparently I had exactly one blog reader from a particular Former Soviet Union state ending in –stan. That is very cool. I have never been there. Nice to “meet” you! Most of you use Internet Explorer to read this – but I don’t have data on those of you that RSS feed it. //

I was walking down the street the other day, entering an airport (surprise surprise). I was passed by a lovely brunette woman, wearing a tight dress that looked really nice on her. She was wearing expensive-looking high-heeled shoes. Her hair was done up nicely, and she smelled nice. Her hair was styled to fall across the right side of her face, shielding her eye.

All in all, she looked extremely trendy and well put together. But look a bit closer, and notice she was using her hair to shield a black eye. And she had a ring of bruises around her left wrist. Roughly in the shape of a hand.

She noticed me looking and glared back at me defiantly.

And I walked away.

Come dancing,
Come on sister, have yourself a ball.
Don’t be afraid to come dancing,
Its only natural.
--The Kinks

I spent a few hours sitting in an airport lounge the other day. I know, again, surprise surprise.

Whilst there, I found myself thinking about things that annoy me. Again, not a surprise.

There was a TV on the wall. The volume wasn’t overly loud, which was nice. It was set on a 24-hour news station, which is boring after a while – the news doesn’t normally change over a few hour period, so you get to hear the same stories over and over again.

A couple was sitting on a couch not far from me. After sitting there for 30 minutes or so, the wife got up and changed the TV to a garden show. On the one hand, I shared her boredom with incessant repetition, but on the other hand, what if I had been watching it? And, regardless, I hate garden shows, and so had to sit there for another hour being actively annoyed.

In the interest of self-reflection, I did spend a while thinking about why I was annoyed – and I think it came down to her not asking if anyone cared if she changed the channel. She didn’t even make the token eye contact to see if anyone was watching. She just changed it – it’s almost a sense of entitlement. There’s something about a sense of entitlement that makes me want to rebel… even when I agree. Strange, yes?

Just down the way a bit was a group of businessmen. They were, apparently, technology consultants for NASA. They won the annoying prize that day, however. Far outstripping the woman with the channel changing habit.

They were taking about work, which isn’t surprising. The fact that they each chose to talk on their cell phones, separately, to different people at the client, about the costs and details of the project on which they were bidding, was surprising. Nobody but me seemed to be listening, but, for what it’s worth, NASA is overpaying for this project, based on the margin math I did, comparing two of the calls.

And, yes, they were all employing maximum cell-yell.

After their lobbying session was completed, they went back to just talking. One guy was excitedly telling the others about this new technology – ringtones. Wow. I guess it’s new to you! (Thanks to NBC for giving me this line, which I have oft reused.) I was waiting for them to enthuse about text messages next.

And remember these are technology consultants to the US space agency. Does it frighten you, just a bit, that the people making technology to keep people alive in outer space don’t know what ringtones are? Do you think that means they, perhaps, don’t keep up with technological progress? And I wonder if they know the difference between metric and English units of measurement. (That’s a bad Hubble joke, by the way, for those of you who left your copy of “Guide to Technology Irony” at home.)

And a shout-out to the people at the Virgin bar on the plane on my overnight flight the other day. No, really, I wasn’t trying to sleep, despite having earplugs in and an eyeshade on. And, no, I don’t think anyone else was trying to do so either. So, please, by all means, get really drunk and yell at each other, and faux-wrestle in the corridor by my seat. Who needs to sleep, anyway?

Now I know what I have to do…
--Iron Maiden

I spent a weekend in Las Vegas a short while ago. Was very fun – SL took me to celebrate (belatedly) my birthday. No, it’s not a birthday that ends in a “0”, but it’s close.

// Side note: I remember when I turned 30. I had just changed jobs, and someone guessed my age as 40. At the time I thought it was funny, until (a) I realized that he thought I looked ten years older than I was and (b) he pointed out that he now had a “superior officer” who was younger than his son. Neither made me feel very good. //

SL had planned various fun events for me, including a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon.

Did I mention I’m scared of heights? Well, I am. But I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon (except out the window of the occasional jet flight), and I’ve never been in a helicopter. So, SL fixed both those two gaps in my education.

Was a great gift, and I was very, very excited.

So, we got to the place, and I was …well… terrified. I think my hands were shaking. I was trying to find some excuse to cancel.

Sometimes I am a weasel.

But I could find neither a weasel nor an excuse, so we walked out onto the tarmac to get in the copter. I could hear, distantly, the cry of “Dead Man Walking!”, but it was just the ghost of a memory. The helicopter was in good shape, and looked pretty new, so that was a comfort. It was parked in a little parking lot that was next to the Vegas airport. There was a road that connected the lot to the main tarmac, with pebbles on both sides of the road.

We took off, and hovered about 5 feet off the ground… and proceeded to exit the parking lot through the road. I mean, it required us to make some turns, and stop at a stop sign. Why not just fly over the pebbles? I expected to see the pilot using arm signals to mark a left hand turn! Anyway, the ride ended up being about an hour to the Canyon, 30 minutes in the Canyon, and about an hour back.

It was fun, sort of. But it was SO hot that I almost got sick, just from the heat, leaving aside how scared I was. I was slightly shaking most of the time, and holding onto the strap with a white-knuckled grip.

SL, of course, had a huge smile on her face, was looking around everywhere, and was generally having a blast. She was fearless. I was a chicken, but got some comfort from the fact she didn’t have a care in the world. And she reached over to pat me regularly and ask if I was ok – which must have been a funny question since I suspect I was whiter than Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Now, keep in mind that this paragon of bravery is the same woman who can’t watch action movies because she gets nightmares, and yet was more than comfortable in the hundred-degree-plus heat in a little bubble suspended impossibly from a stick spinning at greater than the speed of sound.

Oh, so strange. But thanks SL for being in my life, for comforting me when I’m scared, and for making me do things I wouldn’t do otherwise.

Are you some kind of freak
who lives to raise the ones who fall?
--Shakira

Well, during writing this post, the rain has cleared. It’s now sunny, and the air is clear. Perhaps, as I clear the air, some Godhead has done so, on some far greater plane.

Or helicopter.

I have profoundly mixed feelings, sitting in a taxi, here in London. As we cross Tower Bridge, I remember being here with Jeanne, with her trembling in excitement at getting to see a new play, or sit and have dinner with me, or walk through Hyde Park. Then she’d remember she was supposed to be a grown-up, and she’d compose herself and ask some question about history or philosophy or something. But a few minutes later, the happy little girl inside her would come out again.

I never took her to Paris, but I can imagine her awe as we walked up to Notre Dame, and how she’d try to find the bell tower where Quasimodo lived. I hope she enjoys the chorus there now.

But London was her favorite city. So I’m often a bit sad here. On the other hand, SL lived here for a while, and I’d visit her, and we had a café that was ours and we walked, hand in hand, through Kensington, and had fun and laughed. She made friends, and went out to the country with couples who cared about her.

So London also reminds me of SL, and happy times. Hence, the mixed feelings.

And, of course, I have guilt. The predominant emotion, my personal specialty. Is it ok that I have mixed feelings, or should I be sad, and sad alone? Key word being, of course, alone. According to my friend Bob, the guilt never leaves, it just fades into a tapestry of love, and life, and remembering that she loved you and would want you to be happy and fulfilled. And I do not, under any circumstances, want to lose SL.

So, day by day, taxi ride by taxi ride, I weave my tapestry. Some of the words here are in its woof. And so is the way she shook when excited. And so is the fear, and comfort, in a helicopter.

Yes, indeed, mixed feelings. But I shall focus on my weaving, and on the picture that appears, and hope to reach enlightenment in its face someday.

Come, pick up the shuttle and help me, and together we shall rise above.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back!
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Another anniversary

2008-06-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, at about 1:30pm Pacific, Jeanne died.

I feel fuzzy, like my brain is wrapped in cotton. I am flying to London this afternoon, so I guess I'll be able to sleep though much of today.

Thanks for the comments many of you have sent me. Bob, for the poem/thoughts. JM, for the kind email. SL, as always.

I still miss you, Jeanne. I hope you are painting, and playing with happy dogs, and sitting in the sun somewhere.

Ferris wheels, frights, and other amusements

2008-06-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

Should I fly to Los Angeles
find my asshole brother?
--Bush

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it, my OtherEnders? In my defense, I have been crazy busy, with travel to 4 cities across two continents, and hours that are… well… long. In fact, my current work pace reminds me of the Google IPO. I think, however, this is easier, because I’m getting more sleep. Not enough, granted, but more than I did then.

Before I get into wherever the muse leads, I feel the urge to respond to my comments.

First, a shout out to Forsie, and her defensive gene. I know who to call the next time I’m in trouble – I’m telling y’all, Forsie protects her own. Nice to be on the inner circle!

And apparently there is some modern definition of nunnery that isn’t how Shakespeare used it – he used it to refer to a house of ill repute; it is worth pointing out that not all scholars agree that it was used thusly.

Many of you wrote to tell me what happened in that scene in I am Legend. I think I pointed out that many scenes were too dark to see. The bulk of that particular helicopter scene was among them. So I saw the bright outcome, but not the buildup before it. HJP explained why the film was so dark – it involved color densities and other stuff that was too hard for me to understand. However, it’s clearly a science and an art.

And my friend GW told me what the “Polite” sign meant. He was going to write a comment explaining it, but then wasn’t sure it was acceptable. Well, let’s see if he does it now with a bit of encouragement…

I nearly lost you there
Let’s try to sleep now
--Screaming Trees

The majority of comments, public and private concerned my “cheating” at cards. It’s interesting – various readers perceived it as condescending, while another interpreted it as “typically you, sacrificing for others”. Neither is correct. First of all, forsie nailed it – SL knows. And JR did as well. No surprises here. But they do both like to win, and like it that I don’t care if I win. I prefer them winning – because I think competition is destructive to me. And, by cheating, I get to play the game several times – if I lose, I lose. If I win, I get to decide on a new strategy to try. Playing a second game without shuffling the cards, and with some of the cards already used, is quite difficult. I have to count the cards pretty accurately to be able to do well the second time around. It’s a fun challenge for me.

I’m doing the best I ever did
I’m the best that I can
I’m doing the best I ever did
Now go away
--Godsmack

But because of all of your comments, SL and I decided to talk about the “issue”. We talked, over a few glasses of red wine, at a little sidewalk cafe in Kensington where she was living. In that discussion, she admitted that it made her happy when she won, but felt even happier when she won without my help. Based on that, we decided that I would only cheat sometimes. But she didn’t tell me how to define sometimes, so I predict we will struggle over a few games, eh?

I have a love/hate relationship with the Screaming Trees
-Richard Beckwith

A quick shout out to the Big G in the sky. Two questions – why did you put a call to the GMail blog onto the GMail login screen? If your network has any problems at all, it takes FOREVER to get a response from blogger, so the screen rendering is waiting for a noticeable period of time. Ironically enough, the other day, as I was swearing about this, the blog entry finally came up. And it was about speeding up GMail response. The irony drips like rain from a cloudless sky.

And while I’m complaining about products from the company that prided itself on simple interfaces that were lightning quick… What’s going on with the Reader interface? My stuff, My friends shared items (whether they share or not), blah blah. Basically, they’ve added a bunch of header information that leaves precious little room on my screen for the feeds themselves to be seen. I have to scroll down to see most of my feeds. Yes, not a big deal, but I want to see my feeds, and find some other way to do sharing. Sharing is very cool – but the UI is all wrong. Makes me wonder what happened to UI review?

If I could,
I’d make a deal with God,
and get him to swap us places
--Kate Bush

I was riding in a cab through London the other day, and noticed a woman walking the same direction we were moving. Given the traffic, she was going faster than we were. She had a two-piece work suit on, of some dark color, and it was reasonably nicely tailored. She had blonde hair, cut in a bob about shoulder length. When she walked, her shoulders didn’t move. It was as if her legs moved, but her upper body was somehow disconnected or on springs or something. And she was wearing heels.

I couldn’t take my eyes of her. Yup, you have all figured it out. It was Jeanne. Well, I mean it wasn’t, but for a second I thought it was her. I wanted the cab to speed up so I could see if it was.

So we caught up to her. Surprisingly enough, JR’s still dead, and the lady walking didn’t look so much like her when I got close. But I thought I was going to vomit. And I was slightly off balance for days.

I went to Phoenix for a day trip and didn’t say hi to Jeanne. My excuse? I didn’t have a car. I set it all up, though, I was going to spend the afternoon with FiP and ask him to drive me to where she is. He and I had lunch, and were just chatting, and I lost my nerve. I’m not sure what I do when I’m there, and maybe it’s not pretty. So, I didn’t see her.

Anyway, I remember how she used to walk away from me – to go to a meeting, or whatever. She had that funny little shuffle – legs and hips move on the VERY high heels – but body doesn’t move. Until she turns, just her shoulders and neck, and gives me a little wave, with a shy little possessive smile.

She didn’t have that smile much at the end. Her smile had a weariness, not just tired, but weary, as if her soul was being worn down. I saw that smile but once that I can recall during the end. It was that trip down to Santa Monica.

I have to pause to thank, by name, Kim Cooper, Sergey Brin, and Korianne Cremona. The trip to Santa Monica was at the very end – about a month before she died. I needed a lot of help getting her there safely and comfortably. The three of them were amazing – giving, supporting, and executing to get the trip together.

During that trip, I saw Jeanne smile that way twice. We flew down on a private jet, and she got to fly in the jump seat in the cockpit. As we took off, she turned around and flashed me the biggest smile I’d seen in a long time. My little girl was excited, just for a second, not dreading, or tired, or weary. Excited. Later in that trip, we ditched her family, and I pushed her (in a wheelchair) up the boardwalk toward the Santa Monica Pier. We stopped on a concrete barrier to talk. I think I told her I was sorry. I know I told her I love her. And I hope she told me she forgave me. But I don’t remember that.

Thanks, guys, I got those two smiles because of you.

I wish I had taken her on the Ferris wheel at the pier. She wanted to go, and we just never made it. I think I put up barriers – I’m afraid of heights, I’m afraid of change, and I’m generally anxious about stuff. I bet I spoiled that for her. Sorry, Jeanne. I know you understood me, but I didn’t mean to let you down.

I guess I learned, somewhat. SL wanted to go to that Ferris wheel. I tried to get her there, right then… but it had closed. I’m still terrified of heights, and the idea of going makes my stomach turn, but…

…it’s the bitter taste of losing
everything I held so dear
--Sarah McLachlan

…I’ll be damned if I make the same shallow, selfish, silly, stupid mistake again.

I’m going to get on that Ferris wheel with SL. And try to keep my fear and anxiety to myself. She deserves it.

There is no turning back now.
You have opened the demon
in me.
Get up, come on!
Get down with the sickness!
Open up your hate
and let it come into me
--disturbed

Picture a boy, walking down a small street, shaded on both sides by old Oak trees, with their arms over the road protecting you from the heat of the sky. The day is humid and hot; the air still as death. The boy walks with his head down, his shoulders slumped, carrying a trombone in a grey plastic case. Off to his left, and just in front, he hears a small dog barking. The dog is super upset that the boy is near his yard. Behind him, he hears the squeals of tires turning the corner, racing towards him. His well-trained sense of self-protection causes him to run off the road, to his right.

Sometimes what you learn kills someone else.

The dog followed the boy, still asserting his dominance, as the boy ran. In some peculiar modern dance, the car sped on, the dog sped on… and the two collided.

The street is now silent. The car speeds on, leaving a perfectly round blood pool in the middle of the street, that grows with each labored breath of the dog. The blood is so red. It doesn’t look like Hollywood at all. It’s thick, syrupy, and reflective. It reflects the boy’s shock, and the horror of the dog’s owner as she comes rushing out, defending the car driver (“He tried to stop!”).

The boy gets a box, and inserts the dog, who is lying very still, but looking at the boy with pleading eyes. The boy picks up dog-in-a-box, and starts to cross the street. At the midpoint, where he heard the tires squealing he stops to look back.

He sees the blood pool, strewn about by his feet, his hands, the box. It’s so red, but darkening even as he watches. It’s brown under his nails, on the creases of his hands. But that could just be the boy’s vision darkening, instead of the blood.

The mother reassures the boy “I’ll watch your stuff while you put him in the car.” The boy couldn’t even get out the words to explain he wasn’t worried about his stuff… he was worried about the blood.

Did he have to clean it up? Would anyone help? What if he got it wrong?

And what happens when the next car races around that corner?

The boy didn’t clean the blood, and neither did the woman. The dried stain was there the next day.

When I look up at you looking down,
say it was only a dream
--Mary-Chapin Carpenter

He was late getting home, and very quiet, and very pale. His family asked him what was wrong, and where he had been.

Almost as if acting, he told the story. Aghast, his sister grabbed him and asked how the boy felt. But the truth was, deep inside, he didn’t know how he felt. And deep down inside, at that level of instinct that teaches you what is right and what is wrong, deep down there he knew that he SHOULD have known how he felt.

And the boy began to wonder if he was different from everybody else.

I’m trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
…
Now I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
And I sail my ship of safety til I sank it
I’m crawling on your shores
--Indigo Girls

Thank you, SL, for saying yes, and I promise we will get on that Ferris wheel.

12 steps along a road to nowhere

2008-05-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

Well, here's a slightly more uplifting post than my last one. This one will be short, I should think, but definitely more uplifting than the last.

As usual, I'm at an airport, or on a plane. Probably not both, since usually when on plane-at-airport, I'm not able to have my technology turned on -- you know that whole "please power your brain off" bit at the start of flights? It impacts my ability to write, which means that I'm usually unable to make fun of the initial take-off routine, despite the fact it is full of funny things on which to comment. But let's move on, for now, shall we?

I'm currently sitting in the BA lounge at Heathrow. I had planned to check my email and do some actual work, but since both wireless networks I can reach have essentially no throughput, I can't actually get anything done. Very annoying. So, I'm writing to you...

The answers are... they are looking at you, not me. And, because she said yes.
--The American President.

For those of you playing the home game, SL said yes. I'm happy, although slightly terrified. And I'm looking forward to her being home. This cross-continental thing really (really) stinks.

But she said yes. So that's a good start. I may, indeed, be trapped like a squid in a dryer, but at least we are together in the dryer, which is... well... probably crowded.

Get thee to a nunnery!
--William Shakespeare

By the way, a "nunnery" is not a convent. And, while we are on the subject, "wherefore" does not mean "where". Juliet is not asking *where* Romeo is, she's asking something quite different.

Words matter, and their meanings are sometimes more subtle than you might expect. Now, if only our President (and some of our current crop of Presidential-wanna-bes) understood that.

Anyway.

I've been paying attention to funny wordings lately. Specifically, funny wordings at airports. Airports are not only an infinite source of security humor to me, but also a nearly inexhaustible source of funny expressions. Believe me, with as much time as I spend at airports, I need to laugh once in a while.

So let's go through the humor together, shall we?

At the Oakland airport, you are forced to hear an announcement repeated every few minutes about "our heightened security stance". First of all, why does the announcement have to happen every 5 minutes -- and why does it have to be so amazingly loud? Second, surely there's a statute of limitations on how long we can talk about "heightened" -- at some point, it must become "normal", right? But, anyway, the funniest part of the announcement is the end "Do not take packages from unknown individuals!" Ok, where to begin on the grammar fun... Can I take packages from unknown groups? For example, if a bunch of people who, as a group, are unknown to me, each wearing a shirt that reads "I'm a terrorist" offer me a box that is ticking, shall I carry it on the plane with me? Continuing in this vein, the key words are "unknown individuals". OK, what if I know the individual, and know him to be a terrorist? Can I then take a package from him?

// Side note -- I use the masculine pronoun because English doesn't have a good gender-neutral pronoun. And I can't get comfortable with "him/her" or any of those constructions. I guess I could alternate between masculine and feminine, but that also seems awkward, especially inside one paragraph, because it's then harder to figure out which pronoun refers to ... which noun. So I'm stuck, sorry. //

// Side note, 2, unrelated. It's almost my birthday. That means I missed my sister's birthday. Sorry, Sis. Happy birthday. You knew I was a flake anyway... //

Back to my airport giggles. At the Burbank airport, I noticed a set of signs over the urinals that read "Please do not throw foreign articles into urinals". To be honest, I can't remember if this was Burbank or LAX or any of the other airports I've been in within the last two weeks, but I think it was Burbank, so that's close enough. So, if I can't throw foreign articles in, what about domestic ones? And does a monograph count as an article? What about a sidebar? And, naturally, what if, instead of throwing it, I place the foreign article-not-monograph carefully into the urinal -- would that be acceptable? These are, indeed, the things that make you go "hmm..."

Airports are, of course, not the only places that have interesting wordings. For example, I was walking around the Kensington Gardens this weekend, and I saw a sign on a driveway. The sign was intended to keep people from parking in front of the driveway, and used a normal expression for doing so. However, the sign was labelled as a "polite notice". Well, the request was polite, indeed, but is there a "rude notice"? And, if so, what does it say? And how does one decide whether to use the polite or the rude one? Or does the rude one get put up after the polite one fails, or perhaps on particularly unpleasant days? Such things keep me up at night, wondering about the truth of it.

Bars are good too. You can order well drinks. But what if you have a cold? This is, indeed, a deep subject. Worse, what if you are hung over? Do you order a get-well drink? And do they price it differently?

// Side note, 3, I think -- have you noticed that almost every city has a two-level bar or dance club called "Heaven and Hell"? The decor is as you'd expect from the name. I almost always like them. But then, I'm partial to that theme, as my birthday party last year showed... //

Let us not forget sporting events. How many times have you heard the talking head on a sporting event say (at a basketball game) "there's a 10 second differential between the game clock and the shot clock." No, there isn't. Or, if there is, some piece of time-keeping equipment needs to be replaced, and quickly. There might well be a ten second *difference* between the two clocks, but I suspect each has a roughly similar definition of a second. The word differential implies that things are changing at a different rate, not that they have different values. Thus, the differential between the two should be vanishingly small, even if the two clocks have different values. Calculus is your friend.

// Side note, number n: No, I don't believe Newton got hit on the head with an apple.

But I am writing this on an Apple.

And oftentimes people want to hit me over the head, so, I guess there's some connection.

And, no, I am not sure why I went there. Back to work now... //

I watched a movie called "I am Legend" the other day. Really fun, all in all, although the scary scenes were a little bit dark for me -- not dark in the psychological sense, dark in the cinematographic sense. As in, literally, they were hard for me to see. But there were some highly effective scenes. A question to my dear OtherEnders: I didn't know what happened to the wife and daughter -- that scene wasn't clear to me. If anybody understood, feel free to leave me a comment, which I won't post, because I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment of the movie.

I've been watching a lot of TV on my iPhone lately. Well, it's not just lately, as many of you know. I watched the first season of Heroes, I watched the first season of Dexter, I watched the first season of Jericho, as well as Battlestar Galatica episodes, and scads of other stuff. I recently have been watching Bones. Bones was recently described as "a cheap copy of CSI".

That may well be correct, but I think of it more as a union of Remington Steele (from the 80's) and CSI. There is the god-like science magic of CSI, with the romantic tension and general social awkwardness of Remington Steele. I understand that juries are apparently now expecting forensic evidence of the sort that appears on CSI. And, true, any sufficiently advanced science appears to us as magic, but some of what is done on the show is... well... magic as far as I can tell.

My personal favorite is when they zoom in on a grainy camera image and then "the computer" makes the image totally clear, with lots of new detail added. I'm not an expert, but generally, information content is not added by reductions. That whole Claude Shannon thing applies.

Come on Barbie,
let's go party!
--Aqua

However, I'm quite happy to see shows where scientists are regarded as smart, helpful, and interesting. It was not that long ago that there was a Barbie who talked, and said "Math is hard!". Now, that's terrific messaging to girls. And messaging matters -- take a look at the percentages (in the US) of women who say they are good at math and science before high school, and the percentage that says so afterwards.

It's scary, and stupid, and bad for the world.

Why am I talking about Barbie? Because I got to play a game using "Barbie" cards this morning. Barbie cards bought for SL by a friend of ours in Dubai.

SL and I play cards. We play a card game that Jeanne taught me. I'm not very good at card games, because I just can't really pay attention to what's going on. I can count cards, if I put my mind to it, but I'm not very good at reading people. As far as I can tell, the strategy part of the poker-esque games isn't too hard, but the tactics involve making educated guesses about other players' behavior. Since that's not my strength, I can't really enjoy the poker-esque games. CarPool Pal is great at the games, and reading people; as a result, I've outsourced much of my thinking to him.

His rates are pretty good, as well; I'd recommend considering such an operation.

I am not particularly competitive in games. I save my competitive side for stuff that "matters". I discovered that Jeanne loved to win at this card game -- she'd giggle and clap her hands like a little girl. Just the memory makes me smile, and tear up.

So, I being a smart, adaptive chap, figured out that I could cheat, fairly easily. Not cheat in my favor; no, I could cheat to make sure she won. There are a few different algorithms for doing so. The simplest is just to do stupid things with your hand, biding time for her to do something smart with hers. This tactic, however, is too ham-handed, too easy to spot; JR noticed it immediately, and so it stopped being fun for her. There are two more complex tactics, but I won't explain them here.

Why not? Because I get to play cards with SL sometimes, and she likes to win too.

I like to make her smile.

So what if I cheat, a little, now and then when SL and I are playing? Surely my karma won't be harmed by a little lie that creates such happiness?

Smiles are precious. In my life, they have mostly been fake -- right before some bit of violence -- or related to the other person's pride in something I did -- "look how good you made me look!". Very few have been genuine expressions of happiness. When you see one, or, better yet, can cause one, pay attention. Store it in your memory. Notice how her eyes move when she smiles and what she does with her hands. Does she grasp at air, or push her hair back, or grab at you? Or all three? Does she laugh, or giggle, or just gasp a little. How does the light reflect off her eyes and skin and hair. Does she tilt her head back in a way that is special to her and to you?

Trust me, store them up. There are never enough such smiles. It's ok to displace some fact like the speed of light in a vacuum, or the formula for the instantaneous velocity of a point-elephant fired out of a point-gun. Make some room in your brain for that which matters. Her smile.

Remarkably enough, SL wins regularly at our card games, and smiles a slightly sly grin when she wins without me cheating. She doesn't complain much when she wins, even if she suspects I am cheating. But since she doesn't know the two more complex algorithms, I still come out ahead in coming out behind. She doesn't always know that I helped her.

And that's good enough for me. I'll always help. That's what I do.

And she said yes.

Another day, another year

2008-04-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Jeanne.

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Jeanne.
Happy birthday to you!

(I think the "and many more" line is inappropriate).

Jeanne Michele Russell,
April 27, 1961 - June 23, 2006,
RIP

The Sun (still) also rises

2008-04-06T21:10:00.000-07:00

Don't judge a book just by the cover
Unless you cover just another
--Sex Pistols

Well, something strange is afoot, perhaps not at the Circle K(tm). I would like to give a warm welcome to some new readers. However, I feel like I should give my disclaimer again. In fact, I should put some label in the body when I give my disclaimer, so OtherEnders can write some client-side code to strip it out when I include it again. I think I’ve given it a lot over the past year or so.

So, here is the Disclaimer. I don't talk about work. Really. Regardless of what I do. I won't post comments about work, and I rarely respond to comments -- but I love reading them, and sometimes comments respond to other comments. And when I pose math problems, Ryan always answers them. That's all good. I don’t talk about work. Instead, I talk about ... nothing very predictable.

But I can predict I won't talk about the music industry, because I never talk about work.

Heh. I can hear you now -- "Wait, the music industry? I thought you were at Google?"

Yes, I was.

A few weeks ago, I met a really inspiring guy. And, as a result, decided to leave Google to work for him. So, now I'm a music executive. In the deepest part of my heart, I worry that I don't really know anything about music.

Except that music is the wallpaper of my life. You may listen to a song and hear notes. I hear memories. And the songs bring them back. Some good memories -- the Prince song that SL danced for me -- and some sad memories -- the Depeche Mode song that was JR's ring tone when she was ill.

I hear a soundtrack to my thoughts all day, regardless of what I'm doing. I spend all day surrounded by music.

What a gift. I wish I had the talent to make music, but I don't. But I'm a fan, and grateful to the artists who do have that talent. I appreciate being able to hear your art; thank you for sharing.

Speaking of "hearing", have any of you seen that ad on late-night (cheap) television for the new hearing aid that the doctor inserts into your ear? It's small and supposed to yield great sound? That claim could be true, I don't know; but the ironic part is that the ad doesn't have a URL, it has a phone number. They tell *hearing impaired people* to make a phone call to find out about a new hearing aid. But phones are super-hard for hearing impaired people... doesn't everybody know that? Or at least, shouldn't people that make hearing aids know that?

// Side note: If you have called me, and I wasn't chatty, it's probably not that I don't like you. It's that phones are hard for me. Luckily, the folks at the place I *used to* work did a great job getting me wireless headsets that covered both ears and were well amplified. So, I could take calls and do lots of stuff on a phone. Thanks, gang. Despite all the jokes I made, and times I complained at you, the team was awesome. I'll miss you all. //

I think this is the first time I have referred to Google by name -- or as my brother sometimes calls it "The Big G in the Sky".

// Side note: yes, my brother works at Google. No, I didn’t hire him – he got hired on his own. He's a *real* engineer. Yes, he's smarter than me, and can actually do stuff. When I have programming, math, or statistics questions, I call him. He is useful, that’s true, but I'm taller. That's something. And nobody has ever called him "Captain Obvious". //

// Side note, on a side note: I think that the person who called me “Captain Obvious” recently was trying to insult me. I've decided to take it as a compliment. I mean, lots of amazing things were obvious in retrospect. The sun does not revolve around the earth -- obvious in retrospect. Energy and matter are transforms of each other -- obvious in retrospect. The war in Iraq would be long and bloody and not at all easy -- obvious... well, to some anyway. Regardless, I have decided to wear my Obvious-ness proudly. I'm going to make myself a Captain Obvious costume. Don't worry, my costume won't have a cape. But I need a sidekick. Perhaps Transparent Boy would be an appropriate one. Ok, enough of this. //

I was stopped in a parking lot the other day by a sad and distracted looking woman in a late-model American car, who asked me where a particular local funeral home was. At first, I answered -- reflexively -- "I don't know." Then I realized I did know.

It was where we cremated Jeanne.

I looked at the woman again, and saw a vagueness in her eyes that I recognized. I was wearing it when I went to pick up Jeanne, in her little brown box. (There's a post about that -- go read it if you want details.)

So I gave the woman directions -- it's hard to find the place actually. I wonder if that's on purpose?

God speed, madame.

From an information perspective, most of us die in vain. Nothing about our life or death helps the next generation.
--Ian Ayres

And if that weren't enough, the next morning K made me go through all my files -- in preparation for changing jobs. And I, of course, came upon the bill for cremating Jeanne. It's surprisingly inexpensive to transform a lovely woman into a pile of light grey ash.

And I sat on the floor of my lovely office, surrounded by boxes and trash, and cried. Thank god I have an office door I can close.

That night at home, I was sorting some more papers, and I came across a card that she wrote me right after the Google IPO, when I was in the hospital. She wrote how proud she was of me, and how I'd been part of something that would change the world, and how she'd be with me when I woke up. A very sweet, loving note.

So, I sat down in my home office, surrounded by boxes and half disassembled computers, and cried again.

In the name of whatever is Holy, that's enough reminders of JR for one day.

I was thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
--Neil Young

K then told me off, again, nicely. She told me that Jeanne wouldn't like me holding on to sadness like this. I think that's probably (still) true. Now, if I just knew what to do with that fact.

It is funny what makes me sad these days. It seems to be changing, somehow. For example, I was listening to my XM radio the other day, on the 80’s channel.

// Yes, yes, I know, SL, my radio is always on the 80’s channel. But can we focus on the story here? Yes, I know, you prefer the world music station, but this is my story – you can write about your music on yours. Ok, ok, I’ll change it! Give me a second… Done, like that music better? //

Anyway, back to my story. I was listening to the radio the other day, and there was a BeeGees song playing. For the longest time, I confused the BeeGees and ELO. I have no idea why, since they don’t sound at all alike, but I confused them.

And one summer day, JR got tired of me confusing them, and so got out her CDs of each, and we listened to a bunch of each one, and I figured out that they are different.

But, unfortunately, now that I can tell them apart, hearing either of them makes me sad. For me, the music takes me back to the moment.

I still listen to Crowded House, though, even though it reminds me of her, because it also reminds me of other things, and of how I first shared my music with SL.

There are even sillier things that make me sad. There’s a pleather pouch, full of random small bills from random countries. Some of the currency is no longer in circulation, and the whole lot was probably worth $100 or so at the peak of its value. It sits in the back of what was JR’s desk. It’s been sitting there, probably, since I put the desk together, years and years ago.

I hate that pouch. I have no idea what to do with it. And every time I see it… well, you get the picture.

You can play the game and you can act out the part
Though you know it wasn't written for you
--James Taylor

Allow me to change the topic, suddenly, without any warning, and without much knowledge aforethought.

I went house hunting in LA the other day. Now, I need to make a real side note. Do you all know that SL's friend M's family *owns an island*? Yes, really, an island. Of their own. I've never even owned as much as an Atoll -- suddenly I feel out of my league. Perhaps I should have said something like "out of my 30,000 leagues under the sea" but islands are actually not, generally, under water.

However, I'm sure that if this island were to find itself underwater, the current administration would send trailers for people to stay in -- but they wouldn't show up for the better part of a year, and they'd contain extremely hazardous chemicals. So, avoid the flooding. That would be my suggestion, but it is just my perspective. Your mileage may vary, and, as we all know, past performance is no guarantee of future success.

And a quick shout out to Megan S -- it was cool to see you on that flight, and thanks for the comment that I didn't post... but you didn't include your email address, so I can't email you back.

In our current circumstances it is actually the will of the people that is often the objective being sought -- yet there is still a tendency to use overwhelming military force in the belief that winning the trial of strength will deliver the will of the opponent.
--General Rupert Smith

While I'm on the topic, a few others have sent me comments recently -- a fairly large contingent from that small town in Arkansas where I grew up. I haven't posted most of them, because many of you *did* include your email addresses, and I didn't want spam crawlers to get your addresses. Hopefully I successfully sent each of you a reconnect note. If I didn't, please forgive me -- I probably lost the email in my queue.

So much for the "world's most organized man", eh? I guess I just have good PR people. Oh, wait, I have *great* PR people. Useful, pretty, and skilled -- and in London, still at the moment.

To paraphrase my perennial social network status, I still miss SL. Only a few more weeks until she returns. She’s been gone a few months, and I really miss her.

But she’s learning a lot, and having fun, and meeting cool new people and doing cool new things.

And soon she’ll be back here.

My brown dog still runs to the door to check and see if she’s behind me when I come home at night, sits and waits a few seconds until he decides she’s not here. Then he turns and sighs; a second or so later, he brightens back up and runs over to have me scratch his back, and the evening begins.

Don't be discouraged!
Oh I realize
it's hard to take courage
--Cyndi Lauper

Apparently, one of the most downloaded ring tones is “Girls just want to have fun”. So there, Mike – it’s not just me!

Yes, I had that ring tone for a long while. It was hilarious. I had it when I had the bright pink RAZR that my team bought me for the holidays that year. I loved that phone – then the roof leaked over it, and the phone spent 12 hours submerged in about 6 inches of standing water. It didn’t work so well after that.

I retired the ring tone with the phone. Now my default ring is “Ballroom Blitz”, but I have many custom ring tones, and I put a silly amount of thought into what I select. SL has a snippet of our song. BF has “London Calling”. One of my favorite ex-coworkers (now) has a bit of “Wish you were here”.

And yes, I bought all my ring tones legally. I do believe that people will pay for music.

Have you ever poured a glass of champagne, and noticed how lovely it is? The bubbles swirl randomly, creating chaos. It’s unpredictable and off-kilter. But then, suddenly, the bubbles even out, and a steady stream of bubbles comes upward from the bottom of the glass in a nice neat line. Suddenly, order emerges, but the order is not static. It’s an orderly change process.

Something happens that changes the entire interaction, the entire situation, from chaos into an orderly set of changes. There’s a lesson there.

Go pour yourself a glass, and raise it. Raise it to your family, your pet, your job, your friends. Raise it to your favorite writer, or songwriter, or… well, whoever.

But watch the bubbles.

It’s a fine, fine day for a reunion
It’s a fine, fine day for comin’ home
--Tony Carey

If you don’t want to say it, you probably shouldn’t do it.

2008-03-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

Well, she's shaking that thing
Bam-a-lam
Boy, she makes me sing
Bam-a-lam
Whoa, Black Betty,
Bam-a-lam
--Ram Jam

Well, I think I should hurry up and post this – I’ve been working on it for about three weeks. Seems that I’ve lost my ability to craft prose quickly, without thinking. I used to sit down at my keyboard – usually on a roughly one-hour flight – and craft a 2,000 word post that was interesting (to me, anyway), and often heartbreaking.

Not so true anymore – I labor over each word as if it were being forced to the surface, a rock driven into my skin by a bad bike accident that requires pressing on the skin, over and over again, to get out. It still feels good when it comes out, but it somehow feels less… immediate.

But I hope the result is still worth reading. The posts these days feel different – first of all, I write less about Jeanne. It’s not that I don’t miss her – I do, believe me. It’s just that the pressure of those stories has lessened – I prefer now telling stories live. I’m no longer traumatized by the trauma someone feels hearing Jeanne’s story. And I find myself telling more happy stories about her – her laugh, her perspectives, her thoughts, her love. But I think telling the heartbreaking stories here was compelling for readers and helped me. So, thank you. Really.

I have spent lots of time on planes lately. I flew Lufthansa back from Dubai recently. Ironically, for an airline that prides itself on punctuality and performance, my seat didn’t work – and seats aren’t really that complicated, I think. And despite the fact that they had reserved a gluten-free meal for me, they insisted on giving my bread with it. After telling each of them that I couldn’t have it, and being ignored, I finally took a piece so they’d stop bothering me! I guess that I should have expected a singular focus on giving me some kind of bread, because my pre-wrapped, and totally taste-free gluten-free meal had jam inside the plastic wrap. I can’t imagine what they thought I was going to put the jam on when they wrapped the meal, but, given that it was there, I suppose that the flight attendants were compelled to give me something to coat with the sugar derivative.

We flew out directly over Palm Island, just offshore from Dubai. It’s a manmade island, in the shape of a palm tree. Apparently, houses on the … fronds? … are quite expensive and lovely. I was just blown away by being in a 747, looking out the window, and seeing obviously recognizable shapes – it’s akin to looking at a satellite picture of the Great Wall and realizing that you can see a man-made object from space; this wasn’t from space, but it was from a couple of miles up – and the shape was clearly visible. I don’t know why it stuck me so much, but it did.

Many things struck me in Dubai. Dubai is lovely – it feels like Vegas-meets-Disneyland. I stayed at a hotel that was really nice, immense, and made to look like an old Arabic construction. Yup, made to look like one – but it was brand-new construction. In fantasyland, you have to maintain appearances. There was a river running through the resorts and you could take a boat from one part of the hotel to another. I don’t know which part of Arabic fantasyland yielded a boat system; nonetheless it was there. So, yes, we rode it – or should that be “road” it – to dinner one night. It was cold, and the driver didn’t dock the boat – instead he just crashed it into the pier and we hopped out – scary, and I bumped my head, but it was fun, I have to admit.

There’s lots of money there, consistent with the Vegas theme. But there is no oil in Dubai, proper, so they are investing heavily in infrastructure, technology, and financial services. And they are quite liberal in their attitudes – I didn’t feel any judgmental feeling from anyone. Many times I saw a woman covered from head to toe in traditional Muslim dress (traditional for her region and flavor of religion, but covered) walking through a mall with a woman in a micro-miniskirt and high heels (looking for all the world as if she were going for a very hot night outing in Vegas). No tension between them was visible; and, sometimes, they were close friends – just with different dress codes. One of my friends that I met there wore the traditional Muslim headscarf – but she didn’t start wearing it until she was in her 30’s and didn’t feel that she was better than others who didn’t wear it. It was her choice, and she was comfortable with others making different choices.

I’m not sure many of our Christian faiths are so comfortable with choice – and I am not sure how many people believe that the Islamic faith is pretty kind, in general. For example, there is a religious rule that forbids cutting someone out of the conversation – you all know the feeling, right, of being the “third wheel”. You are ignored by the people talking, and feel like a loser. That’s against the Islamic religion, as my friend Mo taught me.

I wonder if kids in Islamic faiths who have that model are kinder and gentler to others? I know that I was profoundly shaped by being ignored, or receiving only negative attention. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Yes, yes, I’m sure some of you are now reacting badly to my praise of Muslims. But to judge the entire Islamic tradition by the terrorists is, I think, to judge all of Christianity by white supremacists who use the religion for their own evil purposes.

I got you under my wheels now
--Alice Cooper

I think sometimes people focus too much on the outward look of things, and allow themselves to be seduced by simple, bumper sticker versions of complex issues. I’m a big fan of bumper stickers as vision statements – but they, on purpose, ignore a lot of complexity. I think we might be better off taking some time to understand what’s under the surface.

Most Muslims aren’t terrorists, and the Christ I understand doesn’t believe that whites are better than others.

// Side note: Speaking of the Christ I understand, thanks to C & DF, I got to watch Palm Sunday mass in the Vatican in Rome. Wow – I didn’t expect it to be so impactful. It was. Amazing – and the Pope is way more conservative than I believe. But still… //

I often ride BART to work. I’m partial to ripped jeans, slip-on kicks as shoes, and T-shirts. I have a particular warm coat that is a funny color, with strange patterns – it looks like a school Home Economics project gone horribly awry. I was wearing such an outfit the other day, walking down the platform to the train door I wanted, listening to my music. As I walked, I noticed a woman in line; as I walked toward her, she edged away, as if to hide from me. As if I were a threat. Strange, but … whatever, sorry lady.

Ironically, many of the same people catch the same train day after day. A few days later, I showed up again at the train; this time I was wearing nice Italian loafers, slacks and a bright colorful button-down shirt. And a smooth leather jacket. Yup, you’ve guessed the end of this story already, haven’t you.

I saw that same woman again, and she didn’t shy away from me this time.

Nothing had changed – other than my clothes. And my hair was probably dirtier, but who knows. I think it’s sad that we focus so much on the outside looks, but I guess it’s a good heuristic. Just an unfortunate one. Do you think the woman recognized me the second time? Or perhaps, will she recognize me the next time she sees me in my ripped clothes and decide I’m not a threat?

And if I’m a threat, I’m still a threat wearing expensive Italian shoes. Think about it.

He said "Practice Electra,
You might need it someday.
...
Practice laughing
at my jokes
...
Practice crying
when I leave I you."
--Megan Slankard

I ran into an old friend on a flight back from Austin recently. I was at South by Southwest – a cool conference that captures the connections between the web and film and music. I was there to give a brief talk... and to go to parties, I guess. There is a significant party element to SXSW – my company threw one, as did just about everybody else.

// Side note, 2: Much of my good thinking time happens at urinals. I’m not sure why that’s true, but it is. I used to do all my best thinking when I was running, but not anymore. I’m not sure this is a good side effect of aging. Regardless, one of the things I think about is the design of stalls in men’s restrooms. I really don’t understand them. They all have locks, but it’s usually impossible to tell whether a stall door is locked or not without pushing on it – which scares the person locked inside. I’ve always wondered why the locks don’t work like they do on airplanes – have the lock turn a sign that says “Occupied” or “vacant”.

Now I wonder no more! In the Four Seasons in Austin, they have exactly that system, so, from a distance, you can tell if a stall is free or not. But the one guy who was in a stall while I was at the urinal didn’t lock the door, and so got… surprised… a few times. Sigh. Anyway. //

One night, we went out dancing – to an 80’s club, appropriately enough. The club was super fun, but several of the people were super-aggro. Really more aggressive than need be. A group of women dressed to go out – and wearing massive wedding rings – came up to one of my friends to ask who we were. Nothing untoward here, none of us were interested, and their husbands were 20 feet away. All good, nobody damaged. One of the women tripped and fell – it’s possible she was slightly intoxicated – my friend helped her get back up. A few minutes later – after they had all wandered off – her husband came over and told my friend “if you touch my wife again, I’ll kick your ass.”

My, my – thank god for Texas hospitality! I didn’t feel like getting into an issue, so I ignored it, and my friend bounced back quickly from the bummed out feeling. But, really, dude, why don’t you keep your wife from tripping, or at least “defend” her in front of her, so she can tell you that you are being a tool. Or, best of all, why not thank my friend for helping your wife?

I was once at a punk show, and a guy had brought his girlfriend into the pit. She wasn’t dressed for it – high heels and a skirt. The guy was trying to keep all the banging off of her, and was doing a great job until he slipped and fell. She had this look of terror on her face that was pretty heartbreaking. So I stepped up to her and put my body between her and the crowd until her boyfriend stood back up. Then I passed her back to him – he said “thanks”, as did she, and we all went back to enjoying the show.
Y’all, if SL trips, I hope you will help her back up.

In the morning
you can tell me your dreams
--Melissa Etheridge

Anyway, my friend and I haven’t seen each other for a long time – a few years. I was sitting on the plane and I saw her walk on. I called her name, and she barely recognized me. I found out later that she had already seen me, and had a hint of recognition, but thought I was some second-tier rock guy. Ironic, actually. Anyway, I ended up spending about half the flight sitting next to her, listening to her talk about her career (which is going well), her boyfriend (also going well), and how her family has changed in the last few years (some have jobs, some are moving away, change happens, I guess).

She hadn’t heard about Jeanne, so I told her the story. I told her about Jeanne’s wake. It made her cry, which I didn’t mean to do.

I just read something in a magazine about a famous author who died of cancer; she was in denial that she was going to die, trying lots of alternative treatments, but was apparently in agony the whole time. She refused to talk about death, apparently; her son felt that this denied him the chance to say goodbye.

Thank you, Jeanne, for giving me the chance to say goodbye. Thank you for being open and honest about your death. Thank you for your amazing grace during a time when so many would struggle, during a time when I did struggle.

Jeanne planned her own service – she picked the music (Elton John, of course) – chose the people who would attend, and selected the format. We served champagne, and cheese. I drank coffee – needed the composure. We all told stories about how she affected our lives. I told the story of how I met her, and the story of how she passed. BF couldn’t bring herself to talk – she’s still embarrassed about that, but there’s no need. Jeanne understands, and knows how you feel. Anyway, the stories ranged from funny to sad to off-beat. That was my girl. Complex.

Great, now I feel like crying again. No wonder my young friend felt like doing so.

Instead of crying, I shall wrap this post up. I’m on another plane, coming back from Europe. I’m on United, not Lufthansa, but, once again, my chair doesn’t work. It is the circle of life’s discomforts, I guess. They attendants brought me no bread this time, though.

Here’s to the coming of spring, and change, and those things which remain the same, reminding us of joy and loss.

The whole truth, and nothing but...

2008-02-19T23:02:00.000-08:00

I’m on a road to nowhere
--Talking Heads

Hello again my OtherEnders. It’s been a while. I’m traveling, as usual, sitting on a plane over the Mediterranean Sea at the moment. Almost everyone around me is asleep, except for two middle aged women two rows in front of me who are talking to each other – very loudly. I’m wearing those squishy earplugs that airplanes give you – the yellow foam ones – and I can hear the women clearly through them. I’m annoyed, I admit it.

But then, I’m apparently moody. Who knew? So, perhaps I’m not really annoyed with them, I’m just annoyed, and taking it out on two lovely innocent women. But I don’t think so.

I’ve been gone from home for a week, today. As usual for my trips, I have lots of people around me, but end up spending hours upon hours alone. So, I’m pretty caught up on my email, and have read a few new books on my Kindle.

And I’ve thought a great deal. I’ve thought about a lot of things, but, characteristically, few of them have been positive. And, naturally, I shall share those with you.

Have you ever noticed the moment you start to cry, as your eyes fill up with tears, but aren’t yet overflowing onto your cheeks. At that moment, something interesting happens – your vision suddenly becomes clear. Suddenly, your eyes are at least 20/20. At the moment that you begin to break down, you can see everything so clearly, nothing is fuzzy, it’s all sharply in focus.

There is psychological research that suggests people who are depressed are far better able to estimate their actual impact on the events around them. People who are feeling “normal” overestimate their own abilities and impact.

Doesn’t that make you wonder? When we are normal and reasonably happy, our vision is blurred and we don’t see things correctly. At the moment that we start to get sad, our vision clears, suddenly, and we can see things as they are. To have a real estimation of the world around you, you need to be sad.

What a terrific policy implication. If you want to know what’s going on around you, get bummed out. And try not to be too annoyed by loud people.

I was re-reading my last few posts, and reading some historical ones as well, and I realized that I’ve never told the full story about how I learned that Jeanne was ill. I was on a business trip, and my phone did ring, but there was more.

Jeanne and I were having a very tough time at the moment. We weren’t broken up, but we were struggling, hard. I knew I loved her, and she knew she loved me, but … well… things weren’t great. As if I needed any elements to add to my guilt.

I was about to leave on a trip, and I noticed the yellow in her eyes, and the rash on her lower back. We were in our home in Northern California at the time. She was living in an apartment in San Diego (she had just started a new job at a pharmaceutical company there). We were on the market for a house in San Diego, but hadn’t bought one yet; the plan was in flux, but had been for me to live in an apartment near my office in the Silicon Valley, and her to have the dogs and the stuff in a house in San Diego, and I’d commute down on weekends.

But, as I said, things were tough between Jeanne and I at the time, so the plans were all in flux. Regardless, we were still living together in our little house in the suburbs when we could.

Weird, I know. But sometimes life is weird.

Anyway, I saw the yellow and the rash, and she told me she’d go to her doctor when she got back to San Diego. I left to go on a quick trip, and, shortly thereafter, she left for San Diego. She saw her general practitioner the next morning, and her GP told her that she likely had Hepatitis. We were both annoyed – both of us assumed the other had been having an affair, and that we’d both have Hep as a result.

How much would I give now for her to have been having an affair, and for her just to have had Hep.

Anyway, a few blood tests, and 24 hours later, it’s not Hepatitis. The GP now thinks it’s an autoimmune disease that destroys your liver. It’s bad news – liver transplants are the best treatment, but the average life expectancy is about 10 years. She’s scared and upset, and I am remembering how much I love her and feeling powerless. I wanted to do something… anything. So, I went to find out about liver transplants, and got myself tested to see if I could donate to her (no dice), and started talking to people about donation lists and private donations and … well, whatever I could. I was trying to cheer her up – I remember telling her “I know, honey, but this is treatable, at least it’s not liver cancer.”

Yeah. Rich, huh? You can cut the irony with a knife just now.

Anyway, it’s about Wednesday, at this point. Jeanne is going to see a liver specialist to verify her diagnosis. She’s in San Diego. I am in an airport in the Midwest somewhere. She calls me to tell me she’s headed in for her appointment – her friend from San Diego is driving her – I tell her I love her, and I’ll talk to her soon. Ironically enough, the connection drops at that moment.
Foreshadowing is a cheap writer’s trick, and I think foreshadowing should NEVER be used by the Powers-That-Be in the World-As-It-Is.

But the call dropped at that moment.

And I didn’t hear from Jeanne again for 4 days.

I called her that night, and got her voice mail. I assumed she’d gone to sleep, or something, so I texted her. She didn’t answer by the next morning, so I guessed she was really mad at me. I called her again every few hours – almost creepy stalker-ish, now that I think about it – but never got her.

After 3 days, I was getting frenetic. By now I was in Phoenix, and barely holding it all together. I called HJP, and he starts packing up his car to meet me in San Diego. I got a plane ticket to San Diego.

What I’m going to do when we get there? I haven’t any idea. I didn’t have her friend’s number, or even her last name. I wasn’t sure which hospital her doctor had been at. I had no idea what I could do.

But I was starting to wonder if, instead of being mad at me, Jeanne had died. And perhaps hadn’t listed me as her emergency contact – we were in some weird relationship point, remember – so maybe I just didn’t know.

Another of my friends, without telling, started calling morgues in San Diego. HJP and I were going to go from hospital to hospital until we found some record of her. He’s a good friend – this was his plan, a smart one, I think. I couldn’t have come up with it. I was no longer rational.
As I’m waiting to board the plane, my phone rings. I was sitting on the floor of the airport, probably blogging, I don’t recall. It was Jeanne. I was mad at first – “why didn’t you call me” was probably my “hello”.

Then I heard her voice. Very thin, reedy, weak. Too breathy. With little whimpers interspersed. And I know that something is wrong.

And something is wrong. She went in to have the autoimmune disorder diagnosis verified. As she got ready for the appointment, she gave her friend her clothes, computer, and cell phone. They hooked Jeanne up to the ultrasound, and discovered that her liver was healthy… except for the 8cm mass blocking the duct to her gall bladder.

And they took her in for emergency surgery to see the mass, take a biopsy of it, and try to clear the duct so that bile could pass out of the liver. The surgery took several hours, and left her with visible bruises on her stomach.

And the first of the three tubes that stayed with her until she died.

They couldn’t clear the duct, and the mass was cancerous, and she died.

She hadn’t called me because her friend took her cell phone. And didn’t turn it on, or bring it back, while Jeanne was in the hospital recovery room. And Jeanne was bad with numbers; she couldn’t remember my phone number to call me from the hospital. Her friend thought it was best if only she was caring for Jeanne, and Jeanne wasn’t together enough to tell her that she wanted to talk to me.

So both Jeanne and I were terrified, and unable to reach each other. I’m still angry with that friend. Not that anything changed.

And, actually, I think my abject terror at not having Jeanne around helped me focus on fixing the relationship – it reminded me how much I loved her.

The end game was the same – Jeanne died. But we were both aware of how much the other meant. And the relationship was better.

I’ve spent my whole life waiting for relationships to end, for people to leave me. Jeanne was leaving, we knew that. But the relationship, after that period without any hope of contact, was better. We held each other like sea anchors.

I still hold her memory. I hope you have someone you can hold.

I think a key measure of the success of a relationship is being able to hold a person, and be held, when you need it. It’s hard for me to know when I need to hold someone, and to tell when I need to be held. I regret the tough times that Jeanne and I had, and treasure the good times. I guess, at the end of the day, how we were at the end will have to fill my memory.

See you all soon, in a taxi, hopefully with no loud people…

It was a cold, windy night

2008-01-16T21:57:00.000-08:00

Define Irony: A bunch of idiots dancing around on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.
-- Sreve Buscemi, from "Con Air"

I think it's ironic that the XM station "Sunny" was playing "I'm only happy when it rains" during the drive home.

I think many things are ironic. But likely, I, like Alanis Morissette, don't know what the word means.

I do know a few things.

For example, I know that, despite my assertion that I have nice handwriting, in fact, my handwriting stinks.

// Side note -- several of you asked about the magazine with some pictures of me. It's the February issue of "Men's Health". Enjoy. //

More apropos, I know that I hate cancer.

I also know that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I know that because JR told me. She was full of expressions like that. She understood that people are valuable both for themselves and for what they do to others. To us. Sometimes those people are there to help you learn something. Sometimes for just a time. And sometimes, perhaps, maybe, they are there forever.

Of course, it's tricky to know which one -- is a person in your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime? I first heard Jeanne use that expression in a discussion we were having about a friend of mine who never showed up unless the friend needed something. The friend had played a big role in my life, and then gone missing, to all practical purposes. Jeanne was comforting me, by telling me that my friend might have been a reason, or a season. But was likely not a lifetime.

She was right. And I felt better, after a while. It usually took a while for me to understand. I've always been slow.

My value is in part because I write. And because what I write may make someone think, or do, or reflect.

In fact, perhaps all of my value is because I write.

'Cause we all have wings
But some of us, don't know why....
--INXS

I was on a business trip when my phone rang. A few days before, I had noticed a bit of yellow in her eyes, so she made a doctor’s appointment. The call was that Jeanne had just seen her doctor, and the diagnosis was cholangiocarcinoma

I got that call. I hope you never do.

My first reaction was "What? What is it? How do you spell that?" As you can imagine, I hopped onto Google to find out what her diagnosis meant. As many of you know from reading here, cholangiocarcinoma is primary cancer of the bile duct.

As she drove home, we talked about what I was learning. Each fact we learned was scarier than the last.

That call was the start. But it wasn’t the end. The next week, her treatment started. We were blessed to have a great oncologist, and a really solid support group of family and friends.

She had chemotherapy, she had surgeries, she had several different doctors. Each week, new symptoms and ideas appeared, so we had appointments with even more. We immediately realized that it was hard to understand all the information -- doctors would tell us things, and neither of us would remember them clearly. So we started taping most appointments, and taking pages of notes; for each change in medications, we'd write a new set of instructions. Little things became difficult – many medication names are long seemingly random strings of characters, and a few have almost the same name. Which one did the doctor mean for us to change? I tried to make copies of these documents everywhere, so I'd have a copy wherever I was, but I still found myself unable to remember which drug was which at times.

Of course, given all the different physicians and kinds of treatment, it was hugely difficult to keep appointments straight, not to mention making sure she was scheduled for the right treatments first, and had transportation to get there. And each change had to get communicated to lots of different caregivers.

Her illness was hard enough. Even with great doctors and patient advocates, I was constantly confused and frightened – and I wasn’t sick. The terror and sadness were as palpable as the 8cm mass in her liver. The hopelessness we both felt at being so overwhelmed by all the information we were receiving made it all worse.

Her death was one of the hardest things I have ever faced in my life.

Looking back on it, I am amazed at her grace dealing with cancer. I’m grateful to have been at her side when she passed on, holding her hand.

And I can’t imagine doing it without such an immense support system.

I can’t imagine how people go through this without help; yet people have to do so every day. Who could provide the help – governments, companies, families, and religious institutions? Or all of the above? We need to work together to make sure that people fighting serious illness have the support they need to focus on what really matters – their health.

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now.

I was watching a TV show tonight, called "Cold Case". In it, the mother of one of the characters had cancer, and died of it. Their relationship was, I guess, strained. But as the mother got sicker -- and was approaching death -- she came to see the main character. The character had to go to work, but told the mother to call her cell phone if the mother needed anything.

That day, the mother died. Alone. It turned out that she had tried to call the character several times... on the wrong phone number. She didn't want to die alone, but was powerless. She couldn't find anyone to be with, and couldn't stave off cancer.

I almost went to work the day that Jeanne died. Thank you, Jeanne, for telling me not to go. I can't imagine the guilt I would feel.

It's funny the things that make me think of her. I was in a restaurant the other day, and I noticed a woman walking through the door. She was a brunette, I think. She was thin, and in her 30s, I think. But I don't really know. She reminded me of Jeanne. She reminded me of JR because of the eyes, and the way she moved. This woman's eyes were wide, and looking around as if she wanted to soak everything in. Not aggressively, not at all -- rather, she was almost diffident, like a little child looking around in a new room full of new adults.

Jeanne was like that, all the time. She wandered around in a world of wonder, with untold delights and treats, a little girl in her best dress.

This woman moved like that. It's wonderful to see that kind of unabashed innocence. The curiosity and hope that the next thing will be better.

I wish I had it.

There were big storms the other day. And a minor landslide in the field across the road. Just like the week before Jeanne started her chemotherapy. It was really stormy as she got sick, and there was a set of massive slides that ripped the hillsides apart, leaving big brown welts. Now, you can't see where that slide was, it's covered in grass, almost as if it never happened. Life continues. And so does death, I guess.

It's ironic. The other thing that Jeanne used to say -- life is long and life is short. Who knew that hers would be short.

I don't want the grass to grow. I don't want the wind to blow. I've learned much that I don't want to know.

On a foreign night in Dublin
The dust was on my pillow
When the raindrops started falling
--Nanci Griffith

The Jungle, The Fountainhead, The Lord of the Flies

2008-01-05T21:16:00.000-08:00

Every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning's
end.
--Semisonic

Well, I just left SL at the airport. She's headed off on a plane to Europe for 3 months. Yuck.

It's been raining (hard) for the past couple of days. Dark, grey, windy, and generally miserable. Great leaving weather.

As I drove across the San Mateo bridge, the planes were taking off from SFO towards the west, into -- surprisingly -- blue sky. The sky was clear and crisp and you could see forever.

In *that* direction. I was driving east into the storm. Heavy, wind-whipped clouds, rain being driven sideways, and no visibility.

I was driving into night. One step beyond.

So, leaving SFO takes one into light and sunshine, but heading for the current house leads into a chill rain and wind.

Yo, Weather Man, you're laying on the symbolism a bit thickly, don't you think? I mean, really, what's next, harps on the one hand and brimstone on the other?

I mean, I appreciate a nice metaphor as much as the next guy, but I also value subtlety.

I hope that SL is moving on into a sunny, bright new opportunity, and leaving the politics and garbage behind. But I don't think I'm part of that garbage, and so the rain and wind feels a bit over the top.

But then, what do I know, I *still* don't really know how to make scrambled eggs.

And, seriously, did I just quote Semisonic? Wow, when did I become lame?

Skating away.
Skating away.
Skating away,
on the thin ice of a new day...
--Jethro Tull

It is hard to figure out what will "matter" in the future. Perhaps, in some distant future, some Bill and Ted future, Semisonic will be viewed as the harbinger of the future, and the most important social and political statement of our era.

But I doubt it.

Nonetheless, the point is still well taken -- if the Bible were being written today, would we know? A prophet in one's own land, and all that. Robert Heinlein penned a little tale about what would happen if Christ came back to modern day Earth. In "Stranger in a Strange Land", Heinlein asks us to look at ourselves and our prejudices.

And we come up short, turning the Son of Man into soup.

I don't know if we'd recognize a Deity if she deigned to join us, and I'm sure we'd find some way to muzzle her, citing national security or terrorism.

What? No, I didn't vote for this guy.

But I don't like looking at ourselves these days. We are terribly rude. This morning, I was at the drug store.

My drug store has a "HIPAA Compliant" sign for where to queue up to pick up prescriptions. I kid you not -- the sign is labelled "HIPAA compliant". It is about 2 yards from the windows, to provide privacy. I guess the distance from the window ensures patients who haven't gotten their medicines yet can't hear what is being handed to the person in front of them.

Well, compliance is mostly a matter of degrees of silliness.

I'm deaf. And I can always hear what's being dispensed in front of me. But whatever, that's not what I was going to talk about.

I walked up to the HIPAA sign, and there was a woman standing about 5 feet behind it, looking at a home drug test that you'd give to a kid to see if he's doing dope, when he's in his room listening to Rush.

The existence of home drug tests is, in and of itself, a bit creepy. But whatever. Again, not the point of my tale.

This woman wasn't clearly in the line, but wasn't clearly out of line either. So I said "Excuse me, ma'am, are you in line for the prescription counter?" She didn't even look up, just grunted, "yeah" and pushed her way by me back to the sign. No smile, not even a "yes".

Rude, and unnecessary.

For SL's last meal here in the Bay Area, she wanted to have In-n-Out burgers. So we went there -- in the rain, at high noon. Although there aren't shootings in the parking lot at High Noon, there are lots of people stalking about looking for parking, and for who knows what else. As I was parking today, because of the weird angle I started with, it took me two cuts.

While I was making the second cut -- which took all of 30 seconds or so -- a teenage girl cut around me, almost driving onto the sidewalk, and waving her hands at me like a madman.

Good lord, I guess you shouldn't get between this woman and her burger!

More rudeness. Also not necessary.

But, seemingly more and more common.

Jeanne hated rudeness, even more than I do. She was unfailingly polite, even when people were horrible to her. It doesn't seem to bother SL as much.

They are different. Jeanne didn't want to be replaced. But she wasn't. I don't think I shall ever replace her. I can't imagine what replacement means, actually, now that I think about it.

But the real question is not "has JR been replaced," it is "am I being disloyal to JR?"

Is it acceptable to have fun, to have new experiences, without Jeanne? She and I talked about many things that we wanted to do together. Some I haven't done, some I had already done, and some I have done with SL.

I believe that Jeanne approves. I hope I'm right.

I think you can't replace someone. The conditions have to be perfect for a relationship as magic as that of JR and I. Conditions have to be perfect to make oil -- we needed dinosaurs and plants, more or less. Today's deaths are not turning into future greenhouse gases -- Jeanne's ashes are not becoming oil, even though they are cast about the earth -- the conditions are different now.

To replace, to me, would seem to require facing the same circumstances and making a different choice.

Jeanne changed me forever. I am better than I was. Still far from perfect, but better. More polite, more ready to look at myself and others. And no more accepting of heavy handed analogies.

Like this one.

Happy New Year, all. Here's to a more peaceful 2008.

Syncing up after the holidays

2007-12-29T14:49:00.000-08:00

There are two lanes
running down this road,
whatever side you're on.
Accounts for where you want to go
and where you're coming from.
--Mary-Chapin Carpenter

SL and I are on our way back from Africa. Parts of the trip were great, some weren't so great. But it was a great experience, as I hoped. We saw saw lots of amazing wildlife, and shantytowns. We talked to people from all over the world, and to several people who had never seen the inside of a jet. I sat at the knee of the Buddha, as he described how his brothers all left school to work so he could graduate from high school. And how determined he was to repay that debt, to the next generation.

I felt joy at accomplishments, and sadness at degradation, and I faced myself each day, thankful for the insane gifts I have been handed, simply because of the color of my skin, and the country of my birth, and my parents' love of education. Gifts are not earned -- my Catholic perspective notwithstanding. Gifts are given, and I am not worthy. But I am grateful.

But there's a foul wind blowing, a wind from the north, pregnant with smoke and tears and war and death. The north wind carries news, and blows the past away.

Sometimes the past is a mist, hanging damp over the hills. Sometimes the past is bright, sunny, Irish green.

Regardless, the wind wins.

SL is heading on an international assignment for three months -- or maybe a bit more. Three months isn't that long -- ask the Reserve units that have been dying in Iraq for longer rotations than they signed up for. But it's a long time to me.

Jeanne died slightly less than six months after she was diagnosed. Not even half a year after I spotted the rash on her back, and the slight yellowing of her eyes. Just a few days later, I was taking her out of a little plastic box, and putting her into 4 ziplock bags, so I could distribute her ashes.

Three months into her illness, more or less, we took her off therapy. Well, more like four, actually, but I like the parallelism of three months here, so I'll stretch the truth to my purposes. After all, the truth is a virus, yes?

Talk to me softly
there's something in your eyes
Don't hang your head in sorrow
(....)
I know how you feel inside,
I've been there before.
Something is changing inside you
--Guns N' Roses

A lot of life can happen in three months. A lot of growth, and change, and failure. I wonder if I'll remember how to talk? I don't have that many people I talk to. When I'm not working, I have gone for days without ever speaking, other than to tell my dogs that it's time for bed and to order anonymous take-out food. I hope that I do better than that this time through.

I've planned a few things to keep myself engaged in the world while she's gone. I'm going to a football game (the oblong kind played in the US, not the round-balled kind played in the rest of the world) I have a few talks to give. I might go ride a new toy -- I bought a touring-focused motorcycle.

SL will be different when she comes back. Or, at least, I hope so. She is going to learn and grow and show herself that she can. Everyone should know that, and I don't begrudge her the opportunity.

In fact, I can think of several people to whom I'd happily tithe from my self-confidence, and she's one.

Living in a different country, facing new work challenges, meeting new people who are different, and think differently. Such a terrific way to make a new start, to mark a new epoch like a layer of ash atop a city in an archaeological dig.

But, change is scary. To me, anyway. When people talk about change, we often speak of caterpillars changing into butterflies. I think most people would call that an improvement -- a multi-legged worm-like creature goes into a shell, and comes out a lovely flying animal. The animal is chased by little girls, in the same way we change unicorns and rainbows and peace.

It's all well and good to say that a butterfly is better than a caterpillar. But it isn't, intrinsically. It's just different. Have you ever watched a caterpillar walk? It's a symphony of harmonic motion between legs and body that is perfectly adapted to its environment. For those of you in the South, go outside, find a caterpillar, and let it walk on your arm. Feel the slight stickiness of its feet, the softness of its skin, the way it knows you aren't right for it.

It is, in and of itself, a work of perfection.

So why do we assert it's better after the cocoon? It's not better, perhaps, just different.

Of course, change -- and its kissing cousin, innovation -- are required for most of us, in varying degrees. Companies that thrive innovate heavily, and life as we know it is a product of millennia of incremental innovation (a.k.a., evolution). I'm a big fan of change, and yet, I recognize its appetite for destruction.

Most evolutionary changes result in death.

Think on that the next time you praise change.

In the pool halls,
the hustlers and the losers,
used to watch 'em through the glass.
--Bob Seger

When I first moved to the Bay Area, I was alone, and lived in an apartment just off of Market Street, in a little neighborhood called "Hayes Valley". I would go to work early and often come back late. There was a little mediterranean place across the street that was open late. Most nights, I'd get takeout hummus, pita, and dolmas after work, then go back to the apartment to read a bit and eat.

But lots of nights, instead of going to bed like a normal person who has to get up in time for market open, I'd go out onto the streets of San Francisco and walk. I loved to watch the people, and laugh at what happens at dark, in the hypothetical anonymity of darkness. I'd see the drug deals, and the attempted ones, with some mixture of humor and distaste. I'd see the homeless people following the winds to some warm corner to sleep. I'd see the streetwalkers trying to locate their next mark. I'd smell food and sweat and urine, hear music and laughter, and feel quiet.

It's hard not to feel alive in a city of walking sleeves. The thing I love most about San Francisco is the night, and the darkness, and that which lives at night.

Now, the weather? That, I don't love.

But I think the part I found most compelling was the fact the the players changed, each night, but the play never changed. I saw different dealers and Johns, and different people staggering out of the strip clubs, and different police officers. But the story line never changed. A foolish consistency, perhaps, but a endless chain of verses, slightly out of phase, like a campfire song. Always different and yet unchanging. Every night I could count on it being the same, and yet fascinating. It was comforting.

The term "sleeve" comes from those Morgan books I was telling you about a few days ago. The ones BF recommended to me. The main character is a guy named Takasi Kovacs; he's consistently annoyed that people say Ko-vacks, instead of Ko-vach. In this world, your memories and consciousness are stored not just in your brains -- the wetware -- but also in little computers called "stacks" that are implanted in your neck, inside the spine. If your body dies, you can dig out the stack, put it into another body, and, voila, "you" are back.

Because your body can change during your "life", they call them sleeves. Get it? You change them like you change clothes. Neat, huh?

And yet, it's not so clean and neat as that. When you come back, you are in some other body -- does your lover still love you? How much of love it mental, how much spiritual, and how much chemical? If it's chemical, then your love will not be in love with "you", but rather in love with some combination of you and your sleeve.

Oops, that could be tough on your relationship, after you are re-sleeved.

And when you come out from being "re-sleeved", your loved ones won't even recognize you. What if you decide that you want a new life? You can keep walking past them, and they will never know which of the unrecognized strangers was the husband/father/brother that just skipped out on his family.

And, if you can live forever, essentially, would you want to? Is there a point where you know too much, and have seen too much, and can no longer pretend to be part of the human race? Over time, I should think your personality would change, edges worn down and polished by the sands of time. But, isn't our weakness that which makes us human? A diamond is lovely, but cold, and loveless.

All in all, these books aren't the best reading I've ever done, but they certainly are disturbing.

Are we (we are)?
Are we (we are) the waiting?
This dirty town
is burning down in my dreams.
--Green Day

I have one and one-half hours left in my return from halfway around the world. So far, we drove an hour to the Cape Town airport to catch a two hour flight to Johannesburg. From Jo'burg, we flew 9 hours to Dakar, in Senegal, where we refueled, changed crews, and got sprayed for insects. Then, back into the air for another 9 hours to Washington Dulles. Two hours, and several customs agents later, we climbed onto a United flight to SFO. Right now, we are somewhere over the upper Midwest. It's clear out the window, and I can see snow on the rough hewn peaks -- not mountains, I don't think we are over the Rockies, but somewhere that has rock outcroppings that emerge from the snow. The sun is very bright and the sky very blue. I can see roads and the edges of parcels of land. But I can't see any buildings -- almost as if man had cut up the land and then left.

SL is sitting next to me reading her vacation book -- and laughing out loud every couple of pages. I guess she's recommending "Eat, Pray, Love" to everyone around us who is trying to watch the movie. I think I shall read it. The guy on the other side of me is watching a marathon of "Office" episodes, and hasn't laughed once. You make the call.

This trip marks the end of one stage of "us". Hopefully, we won't reunite re-sleeved, walking by each other, pretending not to notice. And hopefully we will both prefer butterflies to caterpillars.

I've made a healthy career hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. I'm too good at it; want to know a list of everything that might fail? Give me a call.

But I require hope, and faith, and trust. And the Angel's bright wings over me and the rest of the weary world.

Here's to a better 2008, to peace, to love, and to caterpillars and to butterflies, both.

And my old friend
will you shelter me from pain?
In return, I'll bring you Ireland
--Nanci Griffith

Grapes, please! Please!

2007-12-26T06:22:00.000-08:00

Is it better to be better than to be anything?
--Counting Crows

Jeanne was much better at communication than I. She could listen to me have a little temper tantrum, filter out the random bits, and ask me a question or two that made me feel understood. I guess there's an aspect of my personality that throws tantrums -- I sometimes call it throwing my blocks around, like a little boy.

Not my most charming quality. But, unfortunately, real.

And, like some hypertrophic two year old, it happens when I'm frustrated. In my coldly analytical mind, it happens because I'm trying to say I need something, and getting ignored or misunderstood. The problem? I'm much better at thinking than I am talking, so the thing I'm asking for sometimes comes out garbled.

And the person with whom I'm throwing blocks has to try and decode what I meant. If they are interested. And, normally, why would one be interested?

Only strong people talk about vulnerability.
--Jeanne Russell

That line is from a yellow sticky in Jeanne's writing, that I found in her office stuff after she died. I think it's a variant on something I said to her.

During the dot com collapse, in a wave of corporate self-immolation, Jeanne was laid off. Now, granted, her layoff included a year and a half of salary and bonus and stock vesting, so I preferred to think of it as a very extended vacation. But, nonetheless, she didn't have a job, and wanted to find another.

The job market is always hard on everyone's ego -- it's like the worst dating scene in a bar ever. It's possible that my bar experiences are worse than yours. So, I'll speak in generalities, rather than expose my general (complete) inability to buy anyone a drink. (But I have a nice personality, and good handwriting, really). Anyway, it appears to me that, generally, no matter how good-looking you are, you get shot down more times than you get phone numbers.

Jeanne was facing being shot down a lot of times before she got any numbers. Jeanne got several job offers, as it turned out, but only took one, for a few weeks.

And then she got sick. But that's not relevant for this story.

She was afraid that nobody would hire her. In fact, at a few points, the fear nearly paralyzed her. She didn't know how to deal with being a "failure" at work. Despite the fact she wasn't a failure, and never would be, the trauma of the (inevitable) mistakes and losses that add up in a life, at that moment, to her, scored her as "failure".

She was terrified. She'd never really failed in her life, but (like all of us) she had several hiccups that she had labelled as failures. She'd been a young, lovely, drunken beauty in a consulting firm. She'd made the requisite mistakes with men, married and otherwise. She'd screwed up a few tasks, and hadn't always kept her "integrity", whatever that means. And here was another potential failure, and maybe she couldn't pull out of this one.

She talked about it a lot. Well, not really, I'd recognize that something was bothering her, and try to get her to talk about it, and (sometimes) a fight would result.

She'd fight because she was afraid, and fear -- in addition to being a solo emotion -- seems to reduce us to animal behavior. If you scare an animal it has two choices, run away or attack. She couldn't run away. So, sometimes, when I pressed her to talk about her thoughts, instead of talking, she attacked.

And man did she have sharp claws when she wanted to use them.

In that context, I'd fight because I got my feelings hurt. I'd like to say that I stood there, Yoda-esque, and ignored the emotional waves crashing around me. That is what I am supposed to do. That's what "men" do; or so I was told. And sometimes I did so. I'm proud of those times. But not always.

One time, after one of my better jobs of channeling Yoda, her truth came out -- she was scared and, paradoxically, tired of talking about it. She felt weak.

She didn't want to be weak. Weak, to her, equalled pathetic. And she *never* wanted to be pathetic. She was strong, sharp, funny, lovely... any number of things. But never pathetic.

But, see, she wasn't weak. Weak people act differently. They don't talk about their fears.

Instead, weak people have to win every fight. Everything is, in that world view, a fight to the finish. You can't have the other person be right, because that would be a "win" for them. And, lord knows, you can't lose, on even a single point, because then the other will be on a modern-day Sherman's march through Georgia, burning up all your crops and homes just because they can.

Nope, weak people don't show their vulnerabilities. Nor do they listen to others. They just fight, reflexively, on every point as if their lives depended on it.

Jeanne wasn't weak, she wasn't fighting, she was trying to manage her fear. And I said, offhand, that her effort, and talking about it, was a mark of strength.

Apparently, that offhand remark had a lasting impact on her. Not because the remark was wise -- it's not -- but because she was wise, and strong enough to listen.

Sometimes I wish more of us were that wise. Often, I wish I was that wise. But me? I just throw blocks for a living.

Now main street's whitewashed windows
and vacant stores.
Seems like there ain't noboby
wants to come down here no more.
--Bruce Springsteen

As is so often the case, I'm sitting alone on a balcony in the early morning light, writing. I'm looking at the ocean, and feeling the loneliness that grips me at these times. The sense that I'm invisible, inaudible, imperceptible. Envious of the sleep of those with clear consciences. Envious of the sleep, at all, in fact.

If I was asleep, I wouldn't be feeling this. Don't know what I'd be feeling, but it would be nicer than this disembodied pathos.

It's better here than it was in Mexico, last year, because there are some people around in the distance. I can see their tracks from my lonely balcony. For example, the city is built up with horribly ugly apartment buildings off to my right, on the East. In front of me, and to my left, is the ocean. There are two people kayaking a few hundred yards off shore. A few thousand yards farther, there are four container ships queued up, waiting to enter the port.

The shadows cast by the sun, not yet visible behind Table Mountain, are getting shorter, but have that starkness of a new day, filled with new hopes.

At my feet, there are the remains of two french fries, from a midday snack yesterday. The remains are crawling with ants. Ants appear to be the City animal of Cape Town. They are everywhere.

But there is nothing talking. No voices. No one close enough that I could bask in their reflected life energy.

And it's cold.

Time to take a break and go get a coffee. Surely the kitchen is open, or at least I can stumble my way and find something that will warm me up, help me thaw, inside.

I'll be back.

I can't be right if I'm always wrong
I can't stand up if I'm always kneeling
At your altar or at your throne
You could show just a little feeling
For who I am
Baby you win again
--Mary-Chapin Carpenter

OK, this post is too depressing, even for me. It's self-pitying and fairly annoying. And it's not even about Jeanne's death. I'm just feeling sorry for myself. What a waste of energy.

I left Cape Town today, and am now somewhere in the wine country of South Africa. It's sunny. There are kids playing in the distance. The crickets are talking, nonstop. I'm finally warm. I am going to go have a glass of wine, called, appropriately enough, Luddite Shiraz.

And I'll raise a glass to those that died today in Iraq, to those that starved today in Indonesia, to those that are beaten down by the world, their lovers, their Gods.

Thank you, all, for listening. Maybe go talk to your partner. They might be lonely, and want to be understood, or have help picking up their blocks.

It's funny how the world lives up to
all your expectations.
--Mary-Chapin Carpenter

In the dark, wearing sunglasses

2007-12-24T21:13:00.000-08:00

You got to catch me
if you want me to hang
--AC/DC

Hello, again, my OtherEnders. And a warm welcome to a (potential) set of new skimmers who found me via a consumer magazine, with some funny pictures of me. Nice to meet you. Just in case you are wondering, there is nothing organized here on the Other End of Sunset, just a stream of consciousness and occasionally conscience. The lint that accumulated around the dryer vent of my brain over the past few decades gets cleaned off here, reducing the danger of mental fire.

A quick reminder of the ground rules might be in order-- there are always rules, aren't there? I don't talk about work here, ever. I rarely talk about technology, and when I do, it's mostly to whine about eBook readers.

// Side note: Speaking of electronic book readers, I bought a Kindle, did I tell you already? I don't think so. I'll talk about it in a while. //

Continuing on with the ground rules, I often insert side notes. I have no idea why. They tend to pop up in the middle of stories, disrupting the flow, and are typically syntactically incorrect. I quote song lyrics, and sometimes book or movie lyrics, a lot. They are connected in my mind, but I rarely connect them explicitly in the text. I think that your connections to the lyrics, and to the stories, might be different from mine, and you have the right to form the thread on your own. In fact, I often quote a bit of a lyric or two in the body of the prose as well. It's a game I play.

I refer to people by their initials -- or, sometimes, the initials of a nickname for them. One exception -- Jeanne Michele Russell. I use her name, most of the time.

There are some recurring themes. Love and loss. Past and present, and how my mind flits between them.

Anyway, I don't talk about surfing, I don't tend to use phrases like "totally jazzed", and I rarely link to other blogs. (But David Cowan's post on hospital corners and insomnia is hilarious...)

And the titles of the posts have relatively little to do with their content, usually.

But enough of the rules -- who cares anyway? Where I am, at the moment, it's cloudy and windy, and I can hear the waves breaking against the rocky shore, and I don't care about the rules.

Sometimes, it helps to externalize things. Even if you talk to someone else about it, you're usually talking to yourself. The other guy's just providing a sounding board.
-- Richard Morgan

BF pointed me at Morgan's books. He's a fun science fiction writer, although he seems to employ a few cheap writer's tricks that I find annoying. I have liked reading his books so far, but he cheats, fairly blatantly. He takes the characters off stage to plan the major attacks. He elides key details, hiding this fact in free-form pseudo-prose. And he has a few too many plot twists (and towards the end, he seems to decide not to explain them sometimes.) But, nonetheless, BF is right -- the books are worth reading. She's got good taste in books, but she's smarter than me, and is probably better at keeping track of the twists.

And, at the moment, I'm doing a lot of reading. I'm on vacation. As I told my friends a couple of weeks ago, before I left, I went on vacation to figure out where I left my temper. I've been a bit testy lately.

Whilst able, allow me to apologize, profusely, to those that have felt the rough side of my tongue over the past few weeks.

On vacation, I tend to try and sit in one place for long periods of time, without talking. Often, these places are colocated with seas. I love beaches and sun.

Next to the sea, I feel free, and easy, and simple, and small. The sea keeps our secrets, and doesn't care about what we did wrong, or right. To her, we ... barely even are.

Nice perspective on things.

And I read a lot. So far on this trip, I've read Alan Dershowitz' book America on Trial, and a book on the 2004 election ("Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen"). I've read a few issues of TIME magazine. I've read a couple of Isaac Asimov books, and Richard Morgan books. And a (really bad) book called "The Hunters" by W. E. B. Griffin.

SL and I are reading (out loud, together), a fantasy novel called "The Golden Compass").

I don't like to carry heavy bags. I'm sort of lazy that way, so I carry an e-book reader. Instead of pounds and pounds of books, carry a few ounces of silicon and plastic. For a long time, I carried the SONY one. Nice physical design, but terrible software and not a lot of content available for it. Then I bought the Amazon Kindle product. Exactly opposite experience. Great content -- to wit, all the stuff I've read so far on this vacation -- but really quite poor physical design.

The screen is smaller than the SONY screen, and there is a little keyboard on the bottom. On the right hand side, the entire edge is a one-inch wide rocker switch to move to the next page. On the left hand side, the edge is split into two rocker switches -- previous page and next page. The switches abut the screen. Below the screen there is about a 3/4 inch gap above the keyboard.

If you are visualizing the device in your head, you have likely already identified the problem. How do you hold the device? If you hold it like a book, you'd wrap your thumb around the edge to balance it and hold it where you can see it. Except on the Kindle, if you do that, you flip the pages. To hold it, you have to put your thumb carefully into the gap between screen and keyboard. And that's uncomfortable.

Seriously, it took me all of about 5 minutes to figure this flaw out -- didn't they do any user testing?

But it has loads of great content, so it has displaced the SONY from my bag.

Enough technology, back to life. I read, because it engages my brain, and requires little social interaction. Truth be told, I'm an introvert. I need quiet time every so often, but my work and life require me to be socially engaged most of the time. So part of my vacation plan is to be warm and comfortable and carrying a book and silent.

In a pinch, for solo animals, it's sometimes easier to hang out with a herd of impala, relying on their super-heightened sense of fear to warn you of danger. Impala, for those of you that don't watch Animal Planet enough, are antelopes; they are born to die. Everything eats Impala. Everything with teeth, that is; I don't think grass eats impala, but it would be a close-run fight if it came down to it.

Basically, impala are beautiful fast food. And so they have learned to be amazingly good at fear and alarm. Which is kind of like shock and awe, except it works, unlike our Iraq plans. But I digress.

Impala, like nerds everywhere, are pretty accepting. You don't have to be like them to hang out there. You just have to be willing to accept their natural impala-ness. So, you will see a wildebeest or a zebra hanging out with a herd of impala at various times in their lives. Not clear what the impala get out of it. The zebra gets a gang of nerds with good ears who are afraid of everything dangerous, and so the zebra gets warned of danger, simply by watching what's going on around. The zebra can't do it, alone, but doesn't have more of its kind around, so it hangs out, different, not fitting in, but allowed to remain.

My emotions are often silent, and alone, as well. I think that's part of what makes me watch other people. I am, sometimes, that zebra.

SL and I spent about a week at a game preserve, on safari. Upon the wings of Range Rover, we were delivered to nature in its finest. Lions, leopards, cheetah, cape buffalo, elephant, warthog, hippo. We saw dazzles of zebra and creches of rhino. We saw birds and snakes and ... at the end... we rode in a little teeny aeroplane.

We rode a small, twin-engine propeller plane from the private strip at the game reserve to several other strips at other private reserves. At each stop, we picked up a handful of people, like us, returning from safari. Each flight was about 5 minutes long, and very bumpy. Before each landing, we had to circle the landing strip at a low altitude, to ensure there were no animals in the landing path.

Although Lenny Bruce was not afraid, I was. SL was super motion sick, so she was trying to sleep. Me? I was being the zebra in the pack of impala. I was watching everyone else. At first, the people would get on, and all make a joke about how small the plane was. Gallows humor, perhaps.

They would sit down, and buckle their seat belts, and pull them low and tight across their laps. You know, all that stuff you ignore on "real" planes. Then the plane would take off, and shimmy and bump its way across the sky like a skilled rhumba dancer.

Most people on safari, it seams, are on honeymoon. Couples come aboard, touching each other constantly, as if not quite convinced that the vision of perfection with them is actually real, and actually theirs.

But when the plane started bumping, slowly, all that contact ceased. People grew rigid in their seats, and started to stare, fixedly, forward. The cabin became silent, except for the angry howling of the engines. When we landed, and began to taxi down the runway, couples would hesitantly reach out for each other, and the buzz of conversation would begin again, much in the way frogs in a pond at night are silent when they perceive a predator passing, and then begin to call out again after the danger (real or imaginary) passes them by.

It was interesting -- fear is a solo emotion. When afraid, people withdraw into themselves.

Doesn't that seem strange? Why wouldn't the adversity draw us together? Why face the void devoid of contact?

And even more interesting is the contrast between terror and sadness. Fear is a lonely, solo emotion. Sadness? That we all want to share, like a good book, or a virus.

Sad songs say so much
--Elton John

Yeah, yeah, I guess they do, Sir Elton. And lord knows, this blog has had more than a few sad postings. And our culture says that a burden shared is a burden halved.

I sometimes feel that sharing sadness with others is like taking allergy shots for your own future pain. You feel a bit of their pain, a shadow of it, and you are better able to handle feeling yours, later. In the same way that I get shots, in both arms, full of stuff to which I'm allergic, so that when I see the stuff in the real world, my body can deal with it better.

But why do we cling together in groups to be sad, AFTER something awful has happened, and not group together beforehand, as well?

Perhaps we are alone during fear because we are hoping that the bad thing happens to someone else. We are hiding from the finger of fate. If so, then after it happens, we would experience sadness, but have no need to be hiding -- the finger has written its imprint on someone already, we have nothing left to fear. Thus, fear is alone -- we are hiding -- and sadness is communal -- we are in the open.

I don't believe this, but it's compelling. Got any other explanations, oh my fellow travelers?

I'm no different. My iPod was on the entire time we were flying around the bush. I share my sadness with all of you.

I guess it all gets back to those dying days. Or my dying days. I am not yet dead, and have a chance to continue living – with all of life’s challenges – until I get a few of these left over lessons right.
--Jeanne Russell (from her blog, before she died, here)

I may be a funny-looking wildebeest amongst lovely impala, but I appreciate the impala for allowing me to share their grass, their fear and alarm, and to comment on their horns.

Just remember, silly Impala, Trix are for kids!