I feel the urge to blog something, I don't know why.

There's this corner on the way from my cube to the snack center where I can trim four or five steps from my path if I walk through the 'copy center', an oompa-loompa tv-studio white-linolium flourescent copy room/avenue that cuts the corner. Every time (every single time) I walk this path I have to make the decision 'do I cut through or do I go around the corner?' On one hand, if I cut through and someone else tries cutting through at the same time from the other direction it's a slightly narrow hall for two people. Also, if someone's actually performing printing, copying, or faxing tasks, I'm getting in their way. This is the most minor decision I'm conscious of making several times a day, and yet it lingers.

Yesterday I was walking the path (I went around because I was carrying lunch back to my desk from the cafe. I always go around when I'm carrying food (I've found that my subconscious doesn't count chai as food) because food is messy and the room is clean) and I was thining about how I never blog stuff, and how I could blog this. No. That's stupid. There's a whole subscript of things in my life that are only of marginal interest to me and don't affect anyone else at all. That would be the worst kind of thing to blog, worse even than talking about having gone to see a movie with friends the night before. At least that matters to the friends.

Then I did a mental accounting (ironically due to time afforded by the extra 4 or 5 steps I had to take back to my cube) of the posts I'm more proud of, specifically the Laundry Story, and how there's a Seinfeldesque quality to blogging about nothing.

I ought to go blog about the corner, I thought.

But looking back, it looks like I blogged about the second-order experience of blogging about nothing.

This post is less than zero.

Comments?

Last Tuesday Rachel had an endoscopy to find out more about what's been upsetting her stomach for the last six weeks and longer, and after a trip to the clinic, an IV (for her, not me) a camera-on-a-tube, and a doctor to take her picture so I could look at her from inside as well. Such a pretty duodenum.

I'll let Rachel tell the story but suffice it to say I'm happy that we could take the whole thing in good spirits.

Back when I was at Cal, I intended to sign up for one of the MRI calibration experiments, because I wanted to post a cross-section of my brain, but now I think this is even better.

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Positive reenforcement has been proved successful time and time again. Expressing joy at another person's kindness, gratitude at their thoughtfulness, or mirth at their jests, it all feeds back into the mix to produce more of the same. Somewhere along the way, quite non-deliberately, I took this principle and internalized it, and now I wonder if I'm alone.

I love to create. I like to make beautiful things, useful things, things that other people enjoy. It's probably a good thing that I'm an interaction designer, because when I put something out there I get far more satisfaction from seeing the impact it has on others than I feel from the simple creation of the work. On the basic level, public reaction is the loopback in my positive reenforcement feedback loop. I make good things, and people like them, making me want to make more good things. But the desire to make good things isn't enough.

Some time long ago, possibly in high school, maybe a lot earlier, I got in the habit of giving my subconscious positive reenforcement. In grade school I was always a procrastinator (who am I kidding? I'm at work at 10pm writing a post when I should be finishing the presentation I'm staying late to finish) and when it came to writing papers, I'd often spend the first 13 days of a two week assignment with the subject in the back of my head, taking up spare cycles in the shower or on the bus. Come 10pm the day before the paper's due I'd crack open the word processor (or piece of paper) and empty the tank that had slowly been filling in my head.

Thanks to spellcheckers, I often didn't even have to read my paper before turning it in the next morning.

It usually worked out okay. Somehow while distilling in my think-tank the thoughts polymerized into strands that came out well without doubling back or making logical knots. Sometimes it was disastrous. By the time I was a senior in high school I'd determined that anything I write had a 2/3rds chance of being terrific and a 1/3rd chance of being absolutely awful.

I used to brag that I never knew which it would be until it came back with a grade. In truth that probably has more to do with my frequent skipping of the proofreading process than any auto-aphasia relating to my own writing. I'd never add that part though. I preferred the mystery.

But I digress.

Inevitably, the paper would come back with a grade on it. As Miss Griffith walked around the classroom, handing back papers, I honestly had no idea what I'd find on mine; the subjectivity of grading prose multiplied by my own inability to judge my own work. The uncertainty always came to a sudden clarity when the paper made its way to my desk. (Ever notice how some teachers place the paper face down on your desk, forcing you to execute the revelatory act yourself, like pulling off a band-aid, or possibly a scab?) Either way, seconds later I would know whether I'd written something good or bad. The marks of red completed the greater, outer feedback loop.

This moment is when my own inner feedback loop begins. If I got a bad grade, I'd file the paper away in my backpack, never to be read again. If I got an A I'd re(?)read the paper carefully from beginning to end. I'd read it with pride, and that warmth would drift down to my subconscious, telling it that this is what good writing looks like.

The funny part is that I didn't have the intention of making my own writing better, only to read what I sound like when I'm doing it right.

Nowadays, now that I realize the net benefit, I do it more than ever. When someone gives a particularly laudatory comment on this site, I'll frequently re-read what I wrote, often re-reading the same piece several times. It's like watching a well-worn videotape, looking for clues you missed the first five times. Sometimes I find alliterations and nuggents of metaphor that were so buried in the stream of prose that I don't even know they were there until the fifth time I panned for the gold within.

It's not just papers anymore. I'll relive conversations, re-examine designs, sites, even code. I try to view each with the fresh eyes of he who provided the praise. I wipe my own mental slate clean and pour the sand down slowly and metered to experience not only the resulting work, but the formative process of taking the work in.

I don't know what my bad writing looks like, but as time goes on I seem to have less and less of it, because I understand much better where I find my successes. This might be true in the broader context of life as well. I don't dwell in the past, and when I do, I find it filled with nostalgia, and only very rarely pain.

It may be that I'm doomed to repeat past mistakes, but I don't think so. Tromping through the forest of life we all build trails, and if we backtrack to relive the more enjoyable ones, we can set forth in the future using these well-trod paths as guides, without the need to set warning markers on the rough paths traversed but once, all illusory allusions to Robert Frost aside.

Perhaps it's a form of egotism, or maybe selective memory, but I like to think of it as taking good care in raising my own homunculus.

As a parting thought, I wonder now how far this rabbit hole goes. Does my inner creative self encompass a homunculus of its own? The spark of creativity? Is it a tiny flame that is constantly fed, or one like I, who feeds on his own successes and starves on his failures? Food for thought, as it were.

I wonder if I'll ever read this.

Comments?

Apologies in advance for a question several people may find in very poor taste, but such is the blogger's life. I thought of this while Rachel and I were flying to Las Vegas, eating honey roasted peanuts. I was disproportionately excited because so often they just serve salted peanuts on Southwest and it's a special treat to get two precious bags of the honey roasted variety. (Incidentally, either one is miles better than United's peanut, almond, and pretzel mix. I just can't enjoy small hard pretzels; I don't know why. I also don't like almonds, but I know where that comes from.) Anyhow, back to my inappropriate question:

Say there's a plane crash in your neighborhood, much like one near my cousin's home when a small plane and a Boeing 737 collided and both fell out of the sky in Cerritos several years ago. During the three mile drop to earth, debris scatters in a wide field, and lighter things are carried farther by the wind.

Now, say that later this afternoon you're in your debris-free backyard (you're aware of the crash, but the majority of debris has fallen several blocks away from your home) and you come across a pristine bag of honey roasted peanuts. Assuming that the tiny bag is in good shape and appears no different than normal, and assuming you love honey roasted peanuts, what do you do with the bag?

If you have no particular attraction to this variety of snack, substitute your own airline fare of choice. For example, a mini-bottle of cognac falls in your swimming pool.

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I have this new pet theory that there are some people who are bald or who keep their hair really short because at some point in their life they decided to give it a try, then when they'd had enough and tried growing it back out, they discovered that the 'middle stage,' hair that's too long to be sticky-uppy yet too short to do anything with, was unbearable, and went back to their buzz-cut ways.

These people are stuck on 'Bald Island' where only a two month vacation from people or a good collection of hats can rescue them.

Cheer me on and hope I'm wrong, because I think I'm going to take a visit there today.

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I hate/love it when things I've thought-up and told friends 'I should totally patent that' show up in the marketplace.

Just ask Rachel. I wouldn't shut up about this idea last winter in Pittsburgh. Maybe I should have...

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So after test driving the Prius, two Outbacks, and a Lexus RX330 I've opted for the Prius. I actually put my deposit down two weeks before the car came out, with the intention of having it refunded if I decided to go another way.

Well I've done my research and my test driving, and I'm definitely on the Prius bandwagon. Now I have a promise from my dealership that I'll make it to the top of the waiting list before Christmas, and perhaps a lot earlier.

Now I'm wondering where my car is. I don't mean 'why isn't it here yet' but rather I'm fantasizing about where it is right now. Is it on a barge chugging across the PAcific, just north of Hawaii on its way from the Japanese factory? Is it on the assembly line right now being crafted for me? Is the stereo being assembled, and the aluminum being smelted in preparation for rolling into sheets that will eventually become my doors?

I don't have it yet, but it exists, in some for that will inexorably, like chaos in reverse, form itself into a car.

My car.

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I've been thinking about adding a 'new thing learned today' sidebar to Fury. I think I literally do learn something interesting new every day. I haven't built it yet, but I really wanted to use it last night, so now I have to write it in a post instead.

Last night I learned that in no circumstance is it optimal to determine whether a soldering iron is cool enough to leave unattended by means of touching the tip of the soldering iron with your finger.

The most irritating part is that for a few days I have to try using another fingertip for putting in my contact lenses. It's harder than I thought.

Ow.

Comments?

I have a certain fondness for keyboards. Starting when I learned to touch-type on a fully manual typewriter in the 7th grade, I've migrated to all kinds of keyboards, with different looks and feels, strokes and weights.

I've always found both my writing style and general computing attitude to be greatly affected by the keyboard I'm using. In this regard (and only this regard) I secretly identify with Greg Kinnear's typewriter-afficianado character in You've Got Mail.

I've probably owned more than a dozen keyboards since I learned to type, from the clickitty IBM PC keyboards to the membrane keyboard of the Odyssey II, to the tiny keyboard of my Duo 210 to the Stowaway folding keyboard for my Palm V to my Sidekick's thumb 'keyboard', just to name a few. Okay, make that two dozen.

Atop the highest pedestal in this tactile pantheon sits my Apple Extended Keyboard II, which I got in 1989, along with my Mac SE/30. I called it a 'deck,' massive yet graceful, seeming more suited to the bridge of the Enterprise (1701-D) than on a simple 1980s desktop ("Hello computer!"). (Here's a great photo of Apple keyboards and mice through the ages. The AEK II is the big one on the top left.)

The keys had a soft stroke, and bespoke quiet power when pressed. Even stroking my hand across the full sweep of the 105 keys (I remember that there were 105 keys) gave more a sense of art than doing the same over the 88 keys of a grand piano.

Truly a thing of beauty.

Okay, back to the point, and the present day. For the last six months I've been living off my powerbook, using its decent keyboard while away from my desk, and jacking in to the orphaned keyboard and mouse that came with my now stilled G4 Quicksilver desktop. A decent combination. Well, as the avid reader knows, I sold my desktop machine last week, and the buyer opted for the keyboard and mouse as well. No problem. I'd just buy another.

For the last two weeks, since pulling the keyboard for the eBay photos, I've been using my backup Happy Hacking Keyboard, a tool which, while admirable for its efficiency, compactness, and lack of a caps-lock key, is ultimately cramped and uninspiring. Pair that with a Wacom as my primary pointing device on a desk so cluttered to not have room for it, and my writing was quite literally cramped.

With my eBay money firmly in my paypal account, I've been doing a little spending. I intended to replace my keyboard with another just like it, but it turns out they don't sell the black keyboard separately, only the white model. I wasn't sure how I felt about this inversion, but I went ahead and bought it anyhow, and I don't know how much is in my head and how much in the keys, but it feels more like that vaunted Extended Keyboard II than any board I've had the pleasure of keystroking since. (108 keys. Tee-hee!)

Suddenly writing is a pleasure again. Heck, I've already written 590 words on a new keyboard (on a new keyboard)!

This is a preface to say that, like the new owner of a Strat, I'm learning my instrument, finding our shared voice, but so far she truly sounds sweet.

If you think I'm a freak now, just wait until my new mouse and speakers arrive. Hey, at least it's not an iGesture Pad. God those things look cool.

Comments?

Okay, warning to those who don't want to weird about people's weird biological experiences: This is an article about my weird biological experience. You've been warned.

So I've had a virus for almost a week, slight fever, cough, achy, restless and lethargic (a really annoying combination). Luckily yesterday I was feeling a lot better. My cough and sinuses were still acting up, but the 'brain cloud' had lifted.

I went to sleep last night, and had a little trouble sleeping, waking up every few hours to hack, pee, and get more water. Ugh, but not abnormal for being sick.

When I woke up at 4am though, it was different...

You know how, when you're nauseous, and you feel like you might throw up, and you get this taste in your mouth, like a warning for what's to come? Totally unlike the actual taste of vomit, it's that warning, call it metallic, or bitter, or whatever. you know that taste?

Well, I woke up with that taste in my mouth, strong. Now through the whole illness I didn't have any stomach upset, and even now I didn't feel queasy or nauseous. Still, just to be safe, I got up and walked to the bathroom. Over the next 30 seconds I had wave after wave of this taste. I could actually feel it being expelled from my saliva ducts under my tongue. I mean teaspoons full. Did my mouth know something that my head didn't? It was actually panic-inducing. Adrenaline shot up, which probably created a feedback loop. The conflict between mixed messages from my body and pavlovian response was very disconcerting.

Things finally started to settle down, but it was very unsettling: My body, which usually keeps pretty quiet, woke up, screaming to tell me something, but I didn't know what. I still don't.

Any ideas?

Comments?

When you go both 1 and 2,
do you go 1 first, and then make 2?
Perhaps 2-then-1 is right for you?

Or maybe you go 2, 1, 2:
Starting and stopping before you're through?

Is 1, 2, 1 the way you do?
Or both at once? Have you no queue?

Does this make any sense to you?
or do I stir a murky brew?

For those of you who are confused,
the question that I pose to you
for unknown reason to construe:

Do you pee before you poo?

Comments?

So I've been carrying around my video camera for the past couple of days, since I've had a few minutes more than usual to devote to non-school things.

Living for years in awe of that brief gem, The Ben Brown Show, I've been toying with putting together a sporadic web show I've dubbed 'The Fox Minute,' and have a couple episodes in the can.

The can is where they'll stay though, since episodes best titled 'Kevin Stands in Snow and Vamps for 60 seconds' and 'Kevin Waits at the Bus Stop' probably won't be high on the list of fan-voted top-ten episodes after the show goes into late-night syndication.

Still, it would hardly be fair to taunt you with video and then deliver nothing, so I give you a Moment of Zen.

Also, while the first show was so bad that it'll never see the light of day, I'll let you in on what happens when I turn on the camera and then wait for inspiration to strike.

This is me thinking. (2.1meg Quicktime 6.0)

Comments?

(or "I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves...")

I'm beginning to think that I always have a song going on in my head. True, it's not always at the forefront, but I'm convinced that a part of my head is always singing along to something. This morning, walking tot he bus stop, I noticed my iPod was on zero bars of juice, and I hoped I could at least get a few bars of music, so I could have a song in my head then thought, wait. I don't have one already? And of course I did. I just wanted something else.

I want to write a program, or otherwise find some non-cyclic reminder that asks me what my 'currently playing' song is several times a day. I want to see whether I'm ever without song, and what kinds of music my inner DJ spins for me over the course of days and weeks.

Maybe if you send me email asking me "what are you listening to right now?" I'll reply, and then post the log with times after a day or two of responses.

Just to get the ball rolling, it's 2:29am, and my inner DJ is playing "Haunting Me" by Stabbing Westward.

Somehow that just fits...

Comments?

Comments?

The situation:

• You take the bus to school
• You have a bus pass sticker on your student ID
• As the bus pulls up, you realize that you left your student ID in your other jacket
• You tell the driver, and their stoney face indicates you're going to need to pay the $1.75
• You reach in to your pocket, dig through your backpack, and find that you only have $1.50 (and a couple twenties, but really).
• You tell the driver you only have $1.50. What should you do?
• The driver says okay, but pay the quarter the next time.
• You say okay.

Okay, now flash-forward to tomorrow, when I step on to the bus, armed with my ID with bus sticker: What's my obligation? Should I pay the quarter? Am I really owed a $1.50 that I'll never get back? Do I just forget it and move on?

It's the little questions that can be fun.

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I'm getting the strange feeling that when the PowerBar says "Fuel for Maximum Performance" they're not talking about coding performance...

Damnit.

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I have a few personal oddities, brought to either life or light by the fast-paced, time-shifting, nearly non-linear world I live in.

One (which I honestly have no idea what is responsible for) is an intermitent lack of my sense of thirst. For days, weeks, or even months at a time, I simply won't get thirsty. Not to say that I don't need water; anything but! But all too often I'll go a few days having almost nothing to drink and only realize it when I get a splitting headache, for which my standard elixer has been two excedrin chased with a soda (Coke, Pepsi, something with caffeine) and sometimes some chocolate. The irony of a diuretic easing the pains of dehydration is oh-so-funny at times like that. Oh yeah, and of course I also chug a liter or two of water, but that takes longer to absorb, so that when the meds wear off at least I'm moistened; the one-two punch of treating the symptom and the cause (yet the disease, to follow the metaphor) remains a mystery, as I have no clue what causes me to not be thirsty. The ultimate in procrastination?

At any rate, I was going to talk about my sense of time, and just mention the thirst thing as another example to back up the first sentence claiming that I had more than one oddity. Like I only have two... Oddities for future elaboration include the thumb trick, the amazing on-cue ear dimples, my internal atomic clock, and others I've already mentioned.

Comments?

Workload is at its peak over in these parts. With four real weeks of class left before the end of the semester, I'm working on four final projects simultaneously, along with regular assignments in three classes. Hence the quiet.

Which is a real shame because I have so much to blog about! Well, e-commerce-wise, my Sidekick (Danger, Hiptop, what have you) is arriving tomorrow and also, after waiting (not so) patiently for three months (and three years) I ordered a Titanium Powerbook from Apple today. I knew the model refresh was coming, and there was a lot of speculation on what would be included, from a price drop, to internal bluetooth, to gigahertz processors to internal superdrives to new video cards. Well, I woke up this morning and read that Apple delivered on all of the above except for the internal bluetooth, arguably the smallest of the mentioned features, and so I sprung like a cat to the student developer site and placed my order, saving $500 from what I would have had to pay only a day earlier and getting a much, much better machine in the bargain. I even boosted the RAM from 512 megs to a gigabyte for $40.

Mind you, it's not shipping for 3 to 4 weeks, but I don't mind the wait.

Okay, so I'm having one of those complexes where I have some really interesting content to post (palazzo and logmusic, for those who know) but I feel like I have to do them justice before posting. It's such a quandry.

But more than anything I need sleep. Three hours last night and three the night before, and I have class in 8 hours, so I hope to get at least six-and-a-half hours of rest right now. Can you blame me?

Okay, so much cool stuff to share.. Gonna burst... I finally figured out that the way to regain inspiration was to bend, ever so slightly, my educational endevours to leverage my web initiatives, and vice-versa.

I'll be sane again tomorrow, really. Now I'm going to sleep.

Comments?

So as I've been mentioning, the air's been getting colder, and along with that, it's been getting drier and windier. No biggie, a fine chance to enjoy my wool overcoat while thinking that soon I should shop for a good winter jacket. I'm thinking along the lines of REI, except the nearest store is 5 hours away, but that kind of thing. Something lightweight but good down to 0 degrees. You know, leveraging the space-age fabrics we invented over the last 30 years instead of making jetpacks and helicars.

But I digress...

What I meant to post about was the effect this weather is having on my music listening. No, no. This isn't some monotribe about listening to "Winter Kills" on endless repeat or anything. It's all about the static.

So I use my iPod all the time, putting it in my pocket, with a ling headphone cord stretching from there to the in-ear Sony earbuds I use. These headphones are great. They block a lot of external noise, have great fidelity, and with three different sized sets of plugs to choose from, they don't hurt your (err, my) ears with prolonged use. The in-ear part is all rubber, and the only but of metal is on the outside, where it doesn't touch the skin at all.

Herein lies the problem...

It seems that with the dry, cold wind whipping along the headphone cord between pocket and ear, it builds up quite an electrical charge (and I'm sure the 5400rpm drive inside the iPod probably isn't helping much either). Something about the way the headphones are made seems to necessitate that the charge is not balanced between the two earbuds. so the charge builds up until, after about seven seconds, click-ow! a tiny spark leaps around from the metal bit on the earbud, questing for something grounded, until it finds my ear, two millimeters away.

Both ears...

...at the same time...

...every seven seconds.

It only happens when I'm walking outside in the cold and wind, and the clicks are just annoying enough to be annoying, but not tear-it-out-of-my-ear-and-kill-it annoying. Personally, I'm just wondering how this kind of thing makes it past testing.

So now it looks like I'll have to turn to an alternate set of headphones, depending on the weather, or tape tinfoil from the earbud to my ear, so that the current flows cleanly, instead of arcing periodically.

In effect, I need to ground myself for listening to electric music...

Comments?

Things not to do, item 1505:

Don't go see the midnight showing of The Ring and then drive home alone to park in front of your private cemetery, climb up to your solitary attic and go to sleep.

Unless, of course, you're me.

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I had the weirdest three-minute dream last night. I was outside, on a playground or something, and I noticed a pimple on my arm, just in front of my shoulder. I started to squeeze it and immediately a powder-fresh two-inch long cherub popped out and just lay there on the playground, lethargically looking around. A friend of mine came over and I pointed it out to her, telling her, "that's so weird. that hasn't happened to me in like three months!" while casually inspecting the little two-inch cavern in my arm, like a belly-button with a golf ball-sized room behind it.

I should try to get more sleep. My body's trying to tell me something.

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I just realized that I parse HTML subliminally. I got a plain text email with italic tags in it, and I didn't notice until later that I read and interpreted the tags at such a subliminal level that I saw the words themselves as italic.

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Freeways and cars have two of the most evloved, iterated, and consistant design patterns around; far more so than computers, or even telephones nowadays. It can be funny how wrong it feels to break the rules.

A long time ago I realized, in the abstract, that a cloverleaf intersection of two highways is basically four line segment connectors and a single clover ribbon (hence the name, of course). I always knew that you could stay on the cloverleaf forever, but only as fiction.

Living in LA, I coined a term (probably only used by me, ever) called the 'Rollo', slang for a freeway U-turn, it stood for "Right, Off, Left, Left, On," and applied when you missed your offramp at a regular freeway exit (as opposed to a cloverleaf), and needed to get off at the next exit and turn around.

A couple years ago I was on Highway 92 East going over 880 (in Hayward) having missed the turn I neded to make, and I wanted to turn around. Using the cloverleaf to go from 92 West to 880 South, and staying to the right in the merge, exited 880 South to emerge on 92 West. Basically half a cloverleaf.

Just under a year ago, I was lucky enough to miss the turnoff from 80 East to 780 South, and in a flash I thought 'now's my chance.' I instead took the right-hand 270-degree onramp to 780 North, stayed in the right lane to come on to 80 West, and exited again to emerge on 780 South. If a 'right' is 90 degrees clockwise, then this was a case of nine rights making a right.

So my challenge, to those who choose to accept it, is to ride the cloverleaf the next time you have the chance. Get on anywhere, and take the ride for a spin once or twice. Don't be surprised if it feels somehow 'wrong,' like driving with contacts after years with glasses, or (second example omitted because this is (more or less) a family show).

Intermediate class: Try riding the clover for 5 minutes. Just don't use a cellphone at the time.

Advanced class: Do it with someone else in the car, like a parent, without explaining what's going on. watch them get inexplicably nervous.

Comments?

There's a pigeon in my kitchen.

I've left my kitchen window open for the last couple days. It helps the ventilation in my apartment, and it's my low-tech air conditioner. A few minutes ago I was working at the computer, and I heard rustling. At first I thought it was the neighbors in the hall, but it didn't have that through-the-door deadness.

And it was getting restless.

Being naked (tmi-tmi-tmi), I decided that pigeon-herding was, if not a formal affair, at least one that warranted jeans and a shirt, so I went to the bedroom and got dressed. This is not the first time I've been called to this task, though the first time in seven years, the first time in this apartment.

The broom is in the kitchen. Damn.

I peek around the corner. No pigeon. I look up, in case it was an ambush from the top of the cabinets. Nada. I hear a rustling coming from a bit deeper in the kitchen.

I creep through the doorway far enough to get the broom. My kitchen is very close quarters, so there's no place to retreat (for either of us) once the confrontation began. I also grab the 5 D-cell maglight. I peek behind the fridge.

No pigeon.

I creep around toward the back of the kitchen, and the rustling stops. I'm pretty sure he's wedged between the fridge and the stove.

I back off, just outside the kitchen door, and wait silently to get a read on him when he moves again. It takes about two minutes before the rustling continues, slowly...

I creep back into the kitchen, setting down the broom, flashlight at the ready. I pull away the window curtains so he'll have no trouble finding the way out. I peek between the stove and fridge.

Nothing.

I look on the far side of the stove. Nothing... and silence...

I stand there, waiting, and in a few moments the rustling, softer, continues.

God only knows how, but I think the pigeon is inside my oven.

So I did the only thing you can do when you find out that an errant pigeon has workd its way into your oven.

No! Not that! How could I do that? I mean seriously; my oven doesn't even work.

No: I crept out of the kitchen, sat in front of the computer, maglight in my lap, and blogged it.

Okay, I'm going back in.

Comments?

...but I could use your help.

I'm participating in Ernie's latest webgame: Blind Date Blog. Out of 22 singles, it's now down to two couples, Me and a woman named Lauren, and two others. The audience gets to vote on which couple wins and gets to meet each other in person, and voting is open from today 'till Friday-noon.

So, if you'd like to see a train-wreck in action, take a look at the site, and sign up for the Yahoo group so you can vote in the final poll. I promise to blog the date just as thoroughly as Ernie does.

Comments?

Written Tuesday evening. Didn't get to finding the links and posting until Thursday morning. Read the article. You'll understand...

I store up ambition for the weekend, just in time to be tackled by my ambivilance. I'd have a list of things to accoomplish in the coming fin de semana, but the lethargy of choice usually meant I'd stay home, getting ready to do things, and spending so much time making everything optimal to work (or getting stuck in front of the TV) that soon the clock ticked around the the fateful five o'clock, that time by which if I wasn't underway, I'd already feel defeated because 5 is close to 6 and coming up on 7, the time when things start getting dark, and the time when I'd get home on a workday, so if I didn't feel like making something of the evening after a day at work, how could I bring myself to do it now?

This clearly had to stop.

A lot of intropsection revealed the following interesting insights:

• I'm afraid of success. As long as I'm not giving my 100%, then I can't fail inside, because I could attribute the failure to my not giving my all. But, if I do give my all, and it turns out to not be enough, then it's not that I failed, but that I'm incapable of success.
• I likw creating things, and often feel a sense of loss, of time wasted, when I do things that don't have permenent, tangible end products. I used to be an avid gamer, but nowadays I think about the prospect of sitting home alone for a weekend and churning my way through Half-Life II or Diablo II, networked or otherwise, and think about how it's just another drug, wasting valuable time for little more than an increased ability to play that game. (Irony so thick you can lap it up.)
• I don't have a spontaneous social life. Nearly all my friends live between 8 and 70 miles away, and those who are closer are those with their own social circles and a dearth of free spontaneous time. If I want to see a movie, I plan it between four and twenty days in advance.
• How the above factors combine when it comes to meeting new people is an exercise left to the reader.

Clearly, a change was called for.

It wasn't always like this...

A good part of the problem was accursed Berkeley. Having a car in Berkeley means walking a lot, or working your travels around the ebb and flow of cars, Bereley's tidal urban detrius.

On weekdays, the meters start filling up around 9am, and by 10 spaces are scarce, with those vacated by residents going to work quickly filled by commuting students. Around 3pm the student exodus exceeds the inflow, and spaces start to appear until the wave inverts around 5:30 and residents start coming home. By 7pm spaces are scarce again, and won't free up until 10pm, when those visitng friends, drinking, or studying late start heading home, and the influx is low.

On weekends it's almost reversed. The spaces are empty until nearly 1pm, then they quickly fill, to stay packed until nearly midnight.

All this leads to windows: It's hard to do something during the day if you know you'll have to walk a half-mile home from the closest parking space (which you only know is the closest because you followed your regular parking circuit twice to find the 'edge' where spaces go from nil to plentiful). Instead, you plan activities not around the traffic that moves, but that that is supposed to stand still.

Time for a change...

So as I've mentioned before, the commute is a beast, a killer of time, a murderer of sleep, and while it gives me in tome to write introspective soliloquies like this one, those six hours a week are bought at the expense of a great many more.

The solution isn't a simple change. A paradigm shift would be abandoned nearly as abruptly as it starts. A lifestyle is a heavy boat, and trying to turn it 90 degrees in an instant would only succeed in tipping it over by the might of the momentum it carries.

There are the small things: Do laundry when you only have a load or two, not when you no longer have anything to wear.

Ditto for dishes.

Next comes weekends: Make plans. Give themes to weekends. Get excited. Home is the place you get to escape from on a weekend, not cocoon yourself inside while waitng for yourself to do the things you know you won't.

In the words of Gary Graves, a drama teacher of mine who, in spite of some questionable productions, was one of my better mentors, "make the bold choice." (Alternatively, you can take the words of Dark Angel's 'Original Cindy' when she admits, 'it's a large life.')

Skydiving is a good example. I didn't go out to Byron ten days ago out of defiance against a life half-lived, but as an opportunity to experience something new (the latter being a natural positive, the former merely a double-negative).

And the fun doesn't stop there. This last weekend's original plan was to take a kitesurfing lesson with my father. Though they were booked (and I'm going on my own this coming weekend), and our alternate foray into flying model planes had disasterous results, it was still a thing to do. Any weekend that I don't have to complain about the jesus freaks because I wasn't home for them to torment is a good weekend. The more I do this, the more it sinks in.

Well, I'm starting to approach Jack London Square, without even getting to the heart of what is likely the most rambling post I've written in months.

Tonight and tomorrow morning is Beltane (okay, so finishing and editing took a while. Today's Beltane). Celebrated as a pagan holiday representing the renewing of the annual cycle, it's the closest thing to a spiritual new year. Medieval (and earlier) druidic cultures witnessed Beltane as nature's fertility rite. It was the time when the god and goddess came together to start the seed of a new goddess. In proper imitative ritual, it's the time when young couples would by and by leave the celebration to wander into the woods and fields and make merry, either for their own fertility, or in the fields, to ensure the fertility of the coming crops.

This month I'm seeding my metaphoric fields, planting for the longer view. I'm changing the way I work, the way I play, and to some degree the way I think.

As always, I'll keep you posted over the next few weeks on the more tangible changes.

Have a great Beltane everyone!

Comments?

Before Saturday morning arrived I had done a lot of research on the web. I wanted to know how things go wrong up there, how often, and what I could expect. Ironically, I wanted to make myself more comfortable by being fully informed of the realities, instead of relying on blind trust and assurances.

For example, one of the commonly used skydiving platitudes is that you have a greater chance of getting killed driving to or from the drop zone than skydiving once you're there. This actually isn't quite right. There are nearly 2 million jumps a year in the US, resulting in about 23 deaths a year, or one fatality for every 86,000 jumps. By comparison, there are 0.47 driving fatalities for every million driving hours, equating to one chance in a million of a driving fatality for a typical two-hour journey. Since the Byron drop zone was an hour away, that means the chances of a fatal accident on the trip there or back were roughly one-twelfth that of during the 7 minutes I'd be in freefall or under canopy.

Another way of looking at it is that a single jump is about as dangerous as 24 hours of driving time (not continuous, of course). That way doesn't sound so bad.

Driving to pick up Karen, who had graciously volunteered to come along to keep me company, provide support, and be my cameraman, I reminded myself that tandem instructors are among the most experienced, professional, and risk-avoiding bunch of the lot, and that though there are roughly 140,000 tandem jumps a year, a tandem crash only happens every 2 or 3 years, pushing the stats for my particular jump farther to the safer side.

But enough with the statistics.

I went out there Saturday to watch people skydive. I was willing to pay the $160 jump-fee to learn about the process, gather all the information I could, and back out in favor of a rain-check coupon before I got on the plane. I wanted to see people get in a plane. From the ground, I wanted to see them pull their chutes, navigate, and land. 'Normal, everyday skydiving' doesn't get much press. The average joe only experiences the media of skydiving when there's an accident, or when people are performing extreme maneuvers for the camera. Stories like "last Saturday, 18,230 jumps were made with no serious injuries, one broken leg, and 14 sprained ankles" never make it into the paper. It's just not news.

So Karen and I followed the directions, through the Altamont Pass, past the windmills, by the abandoned train tracks and the cows, and arrived at Bay Area Skydiving just before 9 am.

Jumping right into things, I was given a clipboard with two waivers, one absolving the skydiving company, and the other for the equipment manufacturer. These waivers were the most complete I'd ever read, not only saying I promise not to sue, but that they were not to blame even in the case of gross negligence, that I had provided financially for my dependents in the event of my death, that if I or my dependents should attempt to sue, they are simultaneously agreeing to a $25,000 fine for doing so, and that, in the event that I or they did sue and won, I or my beneficiaries would be entirely responsible for paying the settlement to ourselves, as well as the legal fees for all parties. They weren't kidding around.

Also, I and my friends from work were set down to watch an instructional video, explaining the risks of skydiving, and reiterating the finer points of the waiver. The man behind the desk in the video looked like a ZZ-top understudy, and his words were so wooden and eerie that I half expected his translator to cut out and he would start saying "Ack! AckACKack. AckACK!" in true 'Mars Attacks!' fashion.

Reading each clause and initialing them, I told myself it didn't really matter because I wasn't jumping out of a plane today anyhow. They checked that I initialled and signed everywhere I was supposed to, took my money, and put my name on the tandem list. It would be another couple hours before I was called up.

The first load of the day was just getting underway, so Karen and I went outside to watch the landings. I figured this would make me more comfortable. I wasn't actually scared at this point, because I wasn't actually going to jump. This acceptance of backing out freed me from anxiety the whole morning. I wasn't scared because if I got scared I could back out, so there was no point being scared yet. I don't know if that makes sense on paper, but it's clear in my head.

Watching landings is great. You get a real respect for the control these people have, and how far parachuting has come from the days of circular canopies and landings equivalent to jumps from ten-foot walls.

Two things that Byron had in abundance on Saturday were sunshine and pollen. I'd been fighting an allergy attack for the past several days, and this new assault was easily too much for my own defenses. From the time I arrived my nose was runny, but walking out of the hangar and into the sunlight, staring up at the sky, sneeze followed sneeze, sometimes as many as 12 sneezes in a minute. There was no kleenex to be had, so I made frequent trips to the port-a-potty to get toilet paper for my nose (port-a-potty toilet paper is closer to sandpaper than a kleenex, an unfortunate reality that led to my nose still being sore and dry two days later).

Soon enough they gathered up all the tandem jumpers to go over exit procedures, including how to waddle to the door of the plane with an instructor strapped to your back, how to tilt your head back once at the door, to prevent knocking heads with the instructor upon exiting the plane, how to cross your hands on your chest, specifically to not hold on to the door. That's the instructor's job.

We were told how to position our hands and arms out once we were in free fall, how to 'kick the instructors butt' upon exiting the plane, to get our legs in the proper position for a controlled dive position. We were shown the signals that the instructor might give, tapping our shoulder to remind us to keep our arms out, tapping our thigh to get us to kick back farther. Between the exit door and the canopy deployment there would be no words, because 125mph doesn't lend itself to conversation.

All these instructions would be given to us again by our individual tandem instructors, we were told, but it was good to go through it once first, so we'd remember.

Then there was more waiting. My allergies were really killing me now. an endlessly running nose has been joined by itchy, watery eyes that just wouldn't quit. I'd stand inside the hangar to watch landings now, because a little less sunlight helped to stop the sneezefest my sinuses had become.

Liz, one of my co-workers, and the person whose bravery I was hoping to latch on to (we're both in it together. We'll make each other do this), was called up. Her instructor, Richard, ran her through the procedure again, as she was suiting up. Richard clearly knew what he was doing, and Liz didn't seem too worried about the adventure to come (or so I thought, until Richard told me later how worried she was once they got in the plane ;-) ).

We watched Liz's plane take off, and about ten minutes later, watched her and Richard's descent and landing. Coming back from the landing field, Liz was relaxed and happy. Now I'd not only seen people jumping and landing, I'd seen a friend go through what I was still on the edge of doing, with similar fears, and coming out of it happy (and, of course, alive).

More sneezing, trips for tissues, and watching landings, and my name was called up, along with a few others. I went into the hangar, met up with my assigned instructor, who turned out to be Richard! Sniffling and blowing my nose, I suited up and Richard and I went through the procedure again. I'd paid for video and stills as well, so from this point I also had a camera guy (I never did catch his name!) who added a second reel of clips to the one Karen and I were compiling with my camera.

The jumpsuit (hah, a real 'jump'-suit! Hence the name) had a small pocket on the left bicep with an elastic opening. It was just perfect for me to stuff in a small spool of toilet paper, and I could pull it through the opening, tearing off as much as needed, for blowing my nose. I thought to myself 'if god is the one who makes the next tissue come up, then I guess god is with me in this jumpsuit.' wiping an already raw nose, I wondered if the pollen-free air far above the ground would give me a respite from the allergies.

Strapped into the four-point harness that would hold me to Richard (and, by extension, the parachute) I was shown how to adjust the leg straps once we were under canopy, lifting my legs and pulling the straps down to make a seat instead of a groin swing.

Then it was time to walk to the plane. The plane's door is in the back, and so the first out the door climb in last. Tandems are the last to jump, presumably because they need more time (or because if they chicken out, singles don't have to get past them), and as the biggest tandem, we went into the plane first. Richard and I, facing backwards, were right next to the pilot.

The rest, two tandem pairs and a handful of singles, pile into the plane, making a tight squeeze in two rows straddling long padded benches. They slide closed the plexiglass door, fire up the engines, taxi down the runway and take off.

I've been in a lot of small planes before, so I wasn't too worried about this one, though I was idly amused that, after hearing so many quips about 'jumping out of a perfectly good airplane' I couldn't help but notice that the plane's pilot, along with everyone else, was wearing a parachute of her own. Perfectly good plane, my ass.

I could see the large-faced wrist-altimeter of the jumper in front of me, and I watched as its needle rose above 3,000 feet, 4,000 feet, and higher. Richard attached the four harness points to his harness, and we spent a few minutes tightening the leg straps securely, working together to pull them to their tightest. Richard told me I ought to put my goggles on now. Then it was back to looking out the window or altimeter-watching. I was a little impatient to leave the crowded plane and get this show on the road. I was ready.

Soon we were at 14,000 feet and were in position. The first jumper slid up the plexiglass screen and quickly, without fanfare or pause, was out the door. Richard joked that 'oh my god he fell out!' but I was already calm, and a little detached. I had a thing to do and it was just about time to do it. Looking back on it, I suppose the right word for my state of mind was 'detached' (not that I'd want to use that word anywhere near a drop zone..).

It was only a few more seconds before we were scootching down the bar, stooping up and waddling to the back of the plane and the door. I looked down and I could see the airstrip. I noticed how close the windmill farm, which looked so far away from the ground, seemed to the strip from this height. I couldn't see my car. The parking lot was a speck. Then I was outside the plane, with Richard still inside. I crossed my arms, tilted my head back, and waited. For the briefest of moments, a part of me mentioned that this is the point when I should be jibbering in fear. "Um, lets' not do that" I said to myself, and wondered why we weren't falling yet, and then we were.

Falling, I kicked back and put my arms out. My mouth and nose inflated under 125mph of force. We were falling, it was a blast. It didn't feel like falling, or flying, and certainly not floating. When you're that far off the ground, you don't see it getting bigger unless you watch carefully. Instead, it seems like you're in this stationary place, with wind just blowing really, really hard.

Breathing is weird up there. Taking a breath is like taking a drink from a firehose. Instead of sucking air in to take a breath, it's like not pushing air out quite as hard, letting it push its way in. I macked for the camera a bit, giving thumbs up, and when the camera-guy mocked picking his nose at me I was suddenly worried that I had a stream of snot or something just as glamorous going on, so I mock-picked back at him, not realizing 'till later just how silly this would look, seeing only my side of it, on the eventual tape.

Too soon it was canopy time, and I was almost worried that there wasn't a sudden jerk. There was a pull which brought us into a vertical orientation, from the horizontal, and a pul that kept on pulling, more than a single gravity, but not the force that seemed necessary to bring us from 125mph down to 10mph vertical descent.

Ow, that harness is pretty tight around the areas I'd really rather not have so tight. I waited for Richard to tell me it was okay to adjust my straps. After a few seconds he gave the okay and I brought my leg up to my chest to reach under and try to bring the strap forward. My hands and fingers were numb. I hadn't realized just how cold it was up there, but when I couldn't feel my fingertips I clued in. Still, I needed to move the straps and I could tell when my hands were in the right place so I gave my fingers and hands their marching orders, and though I couldn't feel my hands they did their work. First one leg, then the other. Ahh.

Richard let me take the toggles (handles) while he held them higher up, so we could try a few gentle turns, and a couple tighter ones. It wasn't the roller-coaster ride I'd have expected, because while a roller coaster gives most of its thrill from pushing your body where Newton's laws wouldn't have it go, when you're under canopy making a tight turn, down always feels like the opposite of the canopy, even when it's 45 degrees off of vertical. Lots of fun. We practiced landing, with me lifting the toggles as high as I could, then bringing them all the way down to my legs, creating a momentary stall that, at ground level, would bring our vertical velocity to nearly nothing.

"Don't try to stay standing" was one of the thing they pushed in the ground school. Especially guys. We feel the need to be macho, and forget that, in addition to falling out of the sky, our harness means that we'll be carrying both our weight and our instructor's weight, as the instructor is about 8 inches higher up in the harness. "Lift your legs forward" is the instruction we were given, and that's what I did. As we got closer to the ground, we leveled off, pulled the toggles down as far as possible, and slid easily into home. Seconds later I was unhooked and on my own two feet.

Karen and I stuck around for a couple hours as they dubbed the tape and, at my request, made me a DV copy of the digital master for my own iMovie fun. That digital source, along with footage Karen and I shot with my camera, is where all this video came from.

...

So you might be wondering: "What happened? You were going to bail out, you were worried, and then, what? You're in the air and out the door?" Well, It might seem like a cop-out answer, but simply, yes. I think it was the allergies. I was so distracted with the nose that wouldn't quit. I had so much to occupy my mind that the paranoia and fear of the door, falling, all of it, never came into play.

I'll get shakes sometimes, before and after bungie jumping being a good example. I could put my hand out and see the shaking. Public speaking can do that to me too. Heck, even when I call in on a radio show and I'm on the air, I'm a little shaky. But here, in the plane, in the air, back on the ground, nothing. I didn't have that searing squinch of a squeezed adrenal gland, pumping fear and energy into my body. I enjoyed every second of the experience, and I'll probably do it again if the opportunity arises and the time is right, though I'm considering an AFF program (solo, and a full day of ground training).

Karen said she'd consider jumping next time, as long as she doesn't have a trip planned shortly afterwards (she's going to Thailand, and doesn't want to hobble on a sprained ankle).

Me, I'm just amazed at the power of a little pollen...

Comments?

My morning thoughts, in my own words.

Comments?

Seeya later!

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It was three weeks ago Wednesday, and like every Wednesday it was time for the UED group's weekly lunch-meeting. Since the speaker on this week's topic finished early, Ava, one of our newer gooeys (the pet name for folks in the GUI (aka UED) group) took the chance to field questions about her skydiving hobby.

I've thought about skydiving before, almost done it on several occasions but it was never the right time. I can't say the same thing for bungee jumping. My freshman year at Cal some of my hallmates were very into the idea, driving two hours to 'a train bridge where there are these guys' who will take $40 for two jumps. Forget about waivers and insurance; I'm not sure these guys had names. At any rate, I did end up bungee jumping three years later from a 250 foot crane above Boston Harbor under entirely different and unexpected circumstances, but that's another story.

Last week Ava sent out an email letting the group know about a skydiving trip this Saturday. I signed up.

I'd always been more afraid of skydiving than bungee jumping. At 250 feet, there's not much you can do but completely trust the equipment. There's no emergency bungee and, with a fall of only three seconds, there's not much chance to correct any error that might take place. From 14,000 feet and 60 seconds of freefall there's plenty of time to pull a MacGyver, or at least an emergency chute.

As the time to dive approaches though, I'm finding a lot more anxiety than I had before, and I'm figuring out why.

First off, I've never seen anyone skydive. I've seen Navy parachutists a couple times at sporting events, watched dives on TV and quicktime, and I've heard and read several firsthand accounts of friends' skydiving experiences, but I've never gone along, never seen someone I know jump out of the proverbial 'perfectly good airplane.' All my experience with airplanes are ones where the last thing in the world you'd want to do is jump out. I've been in a lot of planes: jets, seaplanes, four-seater Cessnas, planes with cabins smaller than a minivan with easy-to-reach door handles. I love to fly, and jumping out is one of those things that, though easy, you just don't do, like swerving into oncoming traffic on the highway. That's a lot to overcome.

I dream about flying more often than anything else. For a long while I wanted to learn paragliding, and I read up on it, read the faqs, first-person accounts, and lurked on the SF Bay Paragliding mailing list for over a year. I'd read about people's triumphant days catching thermals over Mt. Tamalpais, flying along the coast at the Dumps, and wherever there was a good updraft.

I read for a while because I wanted to get a fair idea of the danger involved. When a paraglider has a close call, they write it up, identifying what they did wrong (if anything), and how they (we) could avoid or recover from a similar circumstance. I read with fascination and amazement about the occasional technique workshops. One workshop, for example, involves gliding thousands of feet above a lake, pulling in your 'chute to go into freefall, and either re-deploying or deploying your emergency 'chute. If something doesn't deploy quite right, the drag, combined with the water-impact should offer protection.

Safety is on everyone's mind, and every three or four months word would come of a paraglider who had a fatal accident. Locally, in Mexico, overseas, the accident seemed to have very little to do with the experience of the pilot or the conditions. Random.

A frequent poster to the group died while I was a regular reader. He was a passenger on the Alaska Air MD-80 flight that went down off the California coast after its tail elevators malfunctioned. His wife, a flight attendant on the same flight, went down as well. The sorrow on the list (quite rightly) overshadowed the irony.

Over time I decided that, while I'd enjoy taking the passenger seat on a tandem flight, I probably wouldn't want to get into the level of dedication needed to be a paraglider.

Back to skydiving, it's one of those things I want to do once, to add an experience to the pile, part of living a large life. I'm glad I bungee jumped. I might do it again if the circumstances were right, but I don't feel the need to pursue it or proselytize to others.

As with paragliding, for a while I followed the skydiving newsgroups to get a feel for the sport and the attached culture. I found that there are typically a few dozen skydiving deaths a year, out of several hundred thousand jumps and upwards of a hundred thousand participants, and that in recent years, a good percentage of those have been accidents involving the plane, and not the canopy (again with the irony).

I was a newsgroup lurker when there was an accident at Skydance in Davis. A tandem dive (instructor and student strapped together, using a single canopy) went awry and both instructor and student perished. It was the only accident at SkyDance in the last 10 years, and toxicology reports indicated a high blood-alcohol level in the instructor.

Skydiving isn't something I'm going in to blindly. The risk is minute, less than a hundred things I do every year, but with a much more comprehensible disaster scenario. Even with bungee jumping, my analytical mind told me that the #1 bad thing that could happen would be if the cord broke. This would be most likely to happen at the moment of maximum stress, which would be when I was at the bottom of the dive, with a zero velocity. Jumping over Boston Harbor, this would have meant a 15 foot drop into water. Not a bad compromise.

As I mentioned, I only intend to jump once, which has also got its problems. If my goal is to enjoy the thrill of freefall, I'm not likely to be comfortable on my first dive. I don't see there being too much potential for mishap while jumping out of the plane itself, and so for the 60 seconds of freefall, I'd still be thinking about whether the canopy would open, only at that point there would be no turning back. Would this fatalism (poor word choice, but you get the gist) allow me to enjoy the experience in a que sera mentality? Or will I panic until the canopy opens?

Anyhow, the train's pulling in to Santa Clara, so I'd better wrap up. The dive is tomorrow, and I'll bring my video camera. I still don't know if I'll jump, though I'll probably have to pay the $160 jump fee as the price for putting off that decision until after jump training. I want to see other people do it. I want to see the looks on their faces, and glimpse their pre- and post-jump mentality. I want to get comfortable with the idea that people do this all the time.

I may or may not jump. :-)

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"If all your friends jumped out of a plane, would you jump too?"

So I'm going skydiving. I can't guarantee that I'll actually jump out of the plane, but I'll be there, with still and video cameras in hand, to document the process and maybe see a few people jump out of planes. If I get caught up in it, then I'll join them.

Like I told a friend yesterday, if I had a nickel for each time someone used the phrase 'perfectly good airplane' yesterday, well, I'd be able to buy a nice candy bar.

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So I have to decide by the end of the day today whether or not I'm going to go skydiving on Saturday. There's no question that I want to, but there's fear involved, and having stood on the platform of a 250 foot crane and faced the prospect of intentionally stepping off, I can't imagine that jumping out at 14,000 feet would be any easier.

I want to feel the wind rush by me at 120mph. I want to glide on a parachute with nothing to hear but my heartbeat. The problem is I don't know how much I'll enjoy the fall, knowing that I won't feel safe until the chute opens. Jumping out of the plane would be hard, but 60 seconds of freefall? Terrifying.

I have 8 hours to convince myself that it's terrifying in the good way.

Comments?

I've got a bit to say about time travel, including a personal anecdote, but I'm busy at work at the moment, (yeah, sure, call me skeezy. Bite me. ;-) so here's a little reading to preface the post. I encourage you to read it, so we can all discuss after class!

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So naturally the part of my bio that's sparked the most attention is my cheese disclosure and subsequent 'skeezy cheese' amendment.

What is a skeezy cheese? It's different for everybody, and since this is a democracy, I'd like to see what you think is a skeezy cheese, and so without further ado...

First, get a grip on the skeezy clip from Buffy: The Musical.

Good. Now I've taken the liberty of venturing to Bev'n'Mo to document a good selection of cheese, and I put the question to you. Take a look at the selection and judge: Am I SKEEZY or NOT?

Later there may be a taste and smell test to confirm the web audience results.

Comments?

Last Wednesday I went to the monthly BayCHI meeting, where the computer-interaction experts of the Bay Area congregate to gab and see presentations.

That evening's main speaker was one of the founders of Google, who had a lot to say about a lot, and I took some notes, and I'll write up a little synopsis.

But not just yet. First I have to tell you about the mens room at PARC (where the meetings are held).

So before the presentation started, I went to visit the mens room. It's a testament to the true banality of this weblog that I not only feel compelled to inform the noble reader that I was going number one, but that it's vital to also convey to you that at least four, and possibly all ten of the people in this story also had to go number one. There was no number two to be seen.

Okay, the scene: One urinal, two stalls (one handicapped, one small, both with doors that come to a close when at rest). I walked into the restroom and there was one person using the sole urinal, two people waiting for him, and two closed stalls.

Standing there for at least a half-minute, the guy waiting in front of me cautiously taps the handicapped stall's door. No response, so he gently pushes on the door. It opens onto an empty stall. He's in business. Err, so to speak. Urinal guy is done and the other waiter takes his place. I'm tempted to knock gently on the second stall, but as someone comes into the restroom and starts waiting behind me, another temptation enters my mind (no, this isn't that kind of story!).

I wait.

Handicapped guy finishes, I go into the stall, and by the time I'm done, there are now six people in line, all waiting for one urinal and two stalls, one of which (I peeked from the other stall) has stood empty for the last five minutes.

Heh. Usability professionals... he hee... Unless each one of them was performing the same experiment I was...

Comments?

I get songs stuck in my head all the time. Heck, I've been known to get entire soundtracks stuck in there.

Still, my greatest torture came today when songs collided and all that would run through my head this morning was this.

The first part, which I really like, is Dido's Hunter (thanks, Em, for turning me on to this. It seems particularly appropriate to my mindset at the moment). The second comes from the most infectuous flash ever (work safe, but with sound).

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Came home from work about 7 on Monday. Picked up my mail and hopped in the elevator. On the way up I went through the envelopes, divining the contents: Bank statement, election propaganda, 'have you seen me?', and a thin envelope from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hands full, i had to wait 'till I could dump everything in my apartment before opening the envelope.

To give a little background, my dealings with the DMV usually consist of me getting a registration renewal notice, putting it in a pile somewhere, and letting the due date go by, getting a second notice with late fees, trying to pay online, finding out I need a smog check, to pay an old ticket (or tickets), or both, then going in to the DMV in person to pay. My car's registration expires in April. Last year I didn't end up getting my little blue sticker until September.

I got this year's renewal notice about three weeks ago, and promptly went online and paid the fees. My sticker came in last week's mail, and it's now sitting happily affixed to my car, two months early.

This only added to my puzzlement over the envelope I clutched in the hand that wasn't unlocking the door. Did they make a mistake? Did they want more money? Did they want to give some back? It's been known to happen.

After dropping my backpack, coat, keys and energy inside the door, I open the envelope, extracting a single-sheet, block-type missive with "NOTICE" emblazoned coldly at the top of the page.

I read through the page, finding that it was a notification that the DMV had, based on my car's license plate, given my name and address to an attorney who was pursuing litigation against me. They went on to say that they only release addresses to licensed attorneys and only if the attorney requires the address in the course of a civil or criminal action.

They also included the attorney's name, address, and telephone number, helpfully suggesting that I get in touch with the individual to find out more.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuckitty-fuck-fuck-fuck.

I try to remember (as if I'd have forgotten) if I'd possibly damaged someone's car, or been a witness to an accident somewhere. If it were something like a red light or bridge toll (neither of which had I remembered running or evading, mind you) the state would have access to my address already, without having to go to an attorney to get the info from the DMV.

Could I have cut someone off without realizing it? Was their quick notice of my distinctive license plate the tie that brought this letter to my rapidly moistening hands? Could I have seriously hurt someone, or worse? Could I go to jail, my liberty forsook in an unknown moment?

I say again, for those who missed it: Fuck.

Then I think: I have only one plate. My front plate was stolen almost six months ago. I assumed it now adorns someone's cluttered dorm room or frat den, but maybe it's affixed instead to another person's car, and who knows what kind of red-light-running, demolition-derby-loving, hit-and-runner now wields my identity? Am I about to get a sense of exactly what kind of malfeasance he's been dishing out?

Still, there's work to be done. I have a name, and I have a phone number. I hop to the net.

A google search for the attorney's name turns up a handful of links, mostly to the odd East Bay court docket here and there. There are a couple links to conference guides, citing my personal Inspector Javert as a guest speaker, an expert in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder litigation. Did I cut someone off, and now I'm going to be taken to the cleaners for their resulting stress?

I've found pretty much all I'm going to, so I make the call, doubtful that 7:30 in the evening would find anyone in the Walnut Creek law office. Dialing... Busy.

I try again: Busy. Wait 5 minutes, dial, busy.

Okay, whatever. I don't think there's anyone there, and I know I won't be able to sleep with this uncertain fate looming over my head, so it's to Yahoo's People Search, to find a home number. Ahh, a single match, in Danville. Dialing...

"Hello?" The voice at the other end of the telephone couldn't have passed the bar, unless she had a few years head start on Doogie Hauser.

"Is Robert home?" I ask, polite. None of my trepidation showing through. Whether talking to him or his daughter, I know that lawyers can smell fear, and often mistake it for guilt.

"Yeah, just a second. Who is this?"

"Kevin Fox" Like the name will mean anything. He didn't even know my name until the DMV handed it to him. I'd have a better chance of recognition if I told her "Grr, Arg" was calling, but somehow I'd probably have a smaller chance of actually getting Robert on the phone.

"Just a minute..."

And then I had a talk with Robert...

...

I'm tempted to end the story there for a few reasons:

• So the reader would share some small idea of the suspense I felt throughout this eternal ten-minute ordeal.
• Because if I don't finish the story I don't have to look stupid at the end of it.

...

Yes, there was a 'civil action' being taken against me. Would I be going to jail? Would I have to spend my dotcom-hundreds on attorney and court costs, fighting a bitter battle for liberty? Um, no.

One morning about five weeks earlier, I neglected to leave a parking permit on my dash at the emeryville Amtrak station. This inaction set the wheels of litigation rolling so that Ampco, the private parking lot management company contracted by Amtrak, could mail me a ticket. "You'll be getting it within the next few days. You may have received it already." Yes. Yes I did a couple days before. I never thought about how they got my address.

I apologized for bothering him at home. Apologizing all at once for his good nature about being bothered at home by a stranger, apologizing by karmic proxy for the dozens of people who probably call him each month or year, terrified, irate, or both.

With a good-natured goodbye, Robert wished the DMV gave a little more detail about why the person wanted the address. I agree that would be nice, so that I wouldn't interrupt his dinner, and so I wouldn't lose an appetite for my own. G'night Robert. Have a good evening.

Then I went to the Starry Plough to dance it all off.

Comments?

What does a year look like to you? I'm a very visually-oriented person, and many abstract concepts find a spatial representation in my minds eye.

An hour looks like a clock face with a sweeping minute hand, and parts of an hour slices in that pie chart. A day looks different depending on the day, thinking about it now. It's as if every day is a path, and that path looks different depending on the things I'll be doing that day. The path usually heads southwest though.

The weird one though is a year. As far back as I can remember I've had a clear idea in my head about how the months relate to each other. I don't know if this will make sense to anyone but me, but months seemed to have relationships with each other, a years journey followed a constant path, and more importantly, at every given moment I always view the year from my perspective on the present point on that path.

I've never plotted it out outside my own head until this morning, but here it is, a sort of downward path with a lilting jag in the summer. What I want to know is if this makes sense to anyone? Do you have a representation of what a year looks like? Does it look anything like this, or is it completely different?

Thinking more about it, I'm realizing I could probably do the same thing for a decade (or at least ones that have passed) and maybe as little as a minute (returning to the clock face).

Part of me wonders if this is what astrology is about. I was born in July and you can see that this is where the big jag starts. What could it mean if other people have similar perceptions of their year-path (whether represented spatially, emotionally, by color, or whatever synesthetic oddity), with a significant change around their birth-month? How could this affect how people act over the cycle of a year?

Comments?

October should be longer, and february should be shorter.

Not the actual months themselves, of course, but their names. October is already too long (though any shorter and we'd miss Halloween), and of course, someone already took a hatchet to February.

No, look to the right-hand nav, where you can view by date. Note how there's a gentle undulation of the length of these links (note also that Fury's code not only adds month archives in realtime, but automatically appended '2001' to each of the 2001 links the picosecond 2002 rolled around, and I didn't even think to check if it worked until now).

Wouldn't it be nice if the months made a nice, clean curve? (Wouldn't it be nice if JASON wassn't always staring at us from the calendar? At least in reverse chronological order he's upside-down.)

Comments?

So I've expressed in the past how I feel about resolutions, but I've got a few ready for 2002 anyhow:

1. Use people's names. I don't use peoples names when I talk to them. I have a latent fear of accidentally getting the name wrong, and thereby invalidating whatever respect that person thinks I have for them. I'm bad with names. Good with people and who-knows-who and who-does-what, but the actual nombre descriptors often don't get recorded well in my head, so much that even wehn talking to people who I've known for years and *of course* know who they are, the habit remains, and I don't use their name when I talk to them. The worst and most common example is the passing-in-the-hall: "Hey Kevin." "Hi." I never trust my fifth-of-a-second name recall and the risk of embarassment doesn't make it worth it.

   So, flash cards for linking faces and names, and take the risk of making a mistake.

2. Learn how to say goodbye. When I say goodbye to someone, after lunch, at the end of an evening, maybe even a phone conversation, I can't let go. I close it up with this weird need to know when I'll see or talk to the person again. Dirk Gently says every time he leaves someone's company he assumes they're dead, and when he sees them it's a time of surprise and rejoicing. I'm not that bad, but I've got to learn that out of sight doesn't mean out of mind, or out of existence. Maybe it's my frightfully short attention span; If I don't make a little link for the next contact, I might just forget and never talk to them again. Anyhow, once again, small insecurity blossomed into lifelong habit that it's high time I break. I mean, it's silly when, out of habit, you end phone calls with a Southwest Airlines operator or person from the phone company with "'k, I'll talk to you later. Bye!" High time, definitely.