Oops! You want to go here. I changed the topic name. This page is just to maintain continuity for old links.

Got this when trying to send an email to a friend who had AT&T @Home service:

This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:HEIALMBOS.MHRIH

Glad we cleared that one up.

Oh, by the way, I survived layoffs today. Yay! Tears for the 1 in 10 who won't be coming back to Sunnyvale tomorrow though.

Okay, I'm just doing this because KPMG doesn't want me to, and they don't really have the right to do that.

By the way, my personal corporate policy forbids other companies' legal departments from sending me cease and desist letters for violating their corporate policies.

(from everyone)

So, having missed the train by seconds again (argh, argh, argh!) I was driving to Hayward Station as the sun rose over the Hayward Hills. It was a cloudy morning, and it was raining in Hayward, but when the sun rose above the mountains it was still beneath the clouds, and it glowed bright and golden and fuzzy, like viscous fire. It was pretty amazing.

Then, on the train, I saw an end-to-end rainbow, the kind that rides high into the sky, the half-circle you can only see during rainy sunrises or sunsets.

Nobody else on the train even noticed. It was just for me.

Finishing up a dotcom storytime episode (it's funny (in this case, freaky) 'cause it's true...).

Today's a train day, so I'll actually get a chance to write, if I remember to plug in my powerbook before I go to bed so I'll have a full charge.

If I'm feeling particularly loquacious, I'll also be able to write the story I intended to write for World AIDS Day.

PS: Thanks so much Ali, for stopping by, playing games, and lending a valuable hand when you found out that my plan for the day was to clean my apartment! Mmm.. Cleaner...

Okay, Amazon's extracting their subtle revenge, claiming to have shipped a package that UPS can't find, then refusing to run a trace on it.

Kevin: 1, Amazon: 1.

Back in '97, at CKS Partners, I worked with some interesting people. It was the dotcom heyday, and uniqueness was embraced. Not to say that individuality is a back-seat commodity now but, well, there were just some strange people at CKS.

One of the strangest was J. J was a copywriter at CKS, a new mother, a nice person, and a real freak. I'm not talking about quirky-weird, like some of my coworkers. Sondra was '88 lines about 44 women' weird. J was Fairuza Balk in The Craft, fake-dead-sparrow-hanging-upside-down-from-her-office-ceiling kind of weird. J was Chicago Elements of Style and Strunk & White bookended by an alien-fetus-in-a-jar kind of weird. Though there was always a second desk in her office, it saw more temps than Murphey Brown had secrataries.

J was seeing an engineer in the Cupertino office (did I mention that she was married? Oops. Yeah she was) on the sly, while at the same time leading on a co-worker friend of mine, C, who was dissatisfied with her own live-in girlfriend because said partner was starting to date other people. Got it? No? Okay: J, married, with 6 month-old baby, is also seeing engineer-guy behind her husband's back (she later leaves her husband for engineer-guy, who leaves the company and changes his name). J is also having a tenuous relationship with my friend C, who is looking for something real to replace the uncertain attentions of her own girlfriend. J gives C just enough attention to give C hope that J might be the one for her, or at least the one to assuage the pain of her girlfriend's infidelities.

Meanwhile C and I became good friends on some levels, while remaining strangers on others. We have lunch often, talk about our problems, and share stories. She needed an ear and, like van Gogh, I had a spare. We all like to feel needed. Of course on other levels our lives were entirely separate. It's what I would call a 'fourth-wall friendship.' That is to say, We each got a full view of the others life, from one perspective, but there was no interaction with that life. We'd each know what was going in the others 'real' life, but that life was behind the scrim, for viewing purposes only.

The only part of each other's life we would actually touch was in the office. For many people that would mean a Dilbert-Venn intersection, almost a parody of real life with 'how are your projects going' and 'did you see last night's West Wing?' replacing 'what's your major' on the smalltalk punch list. But then there was J, a rust-crimson dot on the overlapping intersection that was CKS.

Like C and myself, J was looking for attention. While at first I rarely spoke with J, eventually C told J that she and I had been talking about their relationship, and J instantly started paying more attention to me. The three of us would go out for lunch together, and occasionally J would try to shock me by telling me about how she hears women masturbate in the ladies room, and she wonders if other people hear her.

J needed constant validation of self-worth, seeking it by trying to fill every nook of her life with physical intimacy. C was afraid of abandonment, and needed a safety-net, or possibly an escape ladder, in case her current relationship fell apart. Me? I fell into my usual role of Jiminey Cricket, acting as confidant to both, while not betraying either. It's not as bad as it sounds: both of them were fully aware. Looking back, they may have gotten off on it, feeling the excitement and fear of telling me what they were too timid or afraid to tell each other. It's a role I've played several times, and one I try hard not to fall into anymore.

Adding to the mix, C was a cutter, and that habit rubbed off onto J. I'm a fixer, and hadn't yet clued into the reality that a lot of people are self-destructive for attention's sake, acting out just so someone will come and try to fix them.

This weird menage-a-twisted relationship came to a head one day when I dropped by J's office for something and she kept wanting to see my hand. "Let me read your palm" as she splayed my fingers, tracing my life-line. For a moment I thought to correct her, giving her my left hand, as I'm left-handed. In palmistry, the right hand of a leftie depicts their 'forecast' at birth, while the dominant hand shows what the person's will has made of their life. I pulled back a fraction, and her grasp on my hand tightened a fraction. I realized I didn't really care so much what she would read in my future.

My hand in her hand, she opened her desk drawer with the other, plucking a pin from amongst its shiny sisters in the front of the drawer. Her fingers grasping my palm, she turned her head up and said, "let me" as she brought the pin toward my hand. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I took my hand back and watched as she slowly, deliberately, pricked her middle finger as I watched in surprise. She dropped her pin onto her desk and took my hand by the wrist once more, while squeezing her pricked fingertip between her thumb and ring-finger, summoning up a growing red drop of blood from the pinprick.

...

When I was seven years old, my sister and I had the same best friend, Linda. Three years earlier Linda and I met when we were in the same kindergarten. One day after school I found a scrap of paper on the playground near the classroom and, ever curious (even more so at that age), I picked it up. The scrap held a phone number. Ever the precocious four-year-old, I took the number home and called it that evening after school. Linda, a hitherto (no, I didn't use words like 'hitherto' back then) unnoticed classmate who had written the number down for another friend, became fast and close friends with me and my older sister, Susie. Linda had a younger brother and golden retriever. Her parents were both teachers and they had a VW van and two bugs, one of which they'd periodically repaint new colors. Our friendship was the stereotypical childhood friendship. We'd spend summers riding our bikes to the mall, camping out in the backyard, and making up games. When one of us would run away from home, it was a fair bet that we ran to the other's. Our parents became good friends.

One day, alone for the afternoon, the three of us decided to become blood brothers, Indian style. I'm sure that we had seen it on TV somewhere; to cement a friendship into a kinship, you each cut your hands and shake, letting the blood mingle and re-enter your system, each of you letting a little of the other's life-blood into yourself. This is a one-way function; irreversible. Forever.

We got the needle, sterilized it with a match, and each pricked our fingers in turn, drawing forth a drop of blood and mixing them in one palm.

It didn't really matter that our mixed blood would never get closer than the palm of my hand. The blood was there, intertwined, and that was enough.

...

My wrist in her clasp, J said she wanted to 'mark' me, to make us closer. I was certain that this was exactly the kind of situation that gave mankind the term 'ulterior.' I took my wrist from her grasp; not violently, but with determination. "No. I don't think that's a good idea." "Please? It's important." (reaching for my wrist again) "I don't think it's a good idea." (pulling out of reach) "Fine," she said, and looked around her desk. I was wondering what had her attention until she said "well I need to wipe it somewhere" and she smeared her finger on my jeans, front-mid thigh. "Wha" "Don't worry, it'll wash out." This awkward blood-power struggle over, I turned and left her office, the red spot on my pale blue jeans already weaving its way into the fabric, turning rusty as it went.

Days later, folding my laundry, I noted that the stain didn't come out; it only faded a bit.

A few weeks later, after a second washing, the stain was gone. To be specific, the spot where J's blood infused the fabric was gone, completely, inexplicably.

I'm glad it wasn't my hand or anything else.

 

Also, the current buzz is that "Ginger" will be unveiled on this morning's Good Morning America. Could be the world's next innovation, could be parp. I'll be on the train, so TiVo will have to watch for me and I'm sure all the pundits will be spinning stories by the time I arrive at work.

Working on Yahoo! stuff all day (imagine...) but I wanted to tease and say that there are a few stories that are mostly finished, and just need some touching up. One will go up tomorrow, the next on Monday. Regular blogging will, as it always does, happen as inspiration strikes.

Also, if the rain is pouring down as expected on Sunday, I'll closet up in my apartment and get some good coding done. I've got a list of changes, including interface refinements (and the 'new to you' color coding) for Fury, and also some work on the oft-delayed other Fury-projects (metacookie and underblog, this week).

And for those of you who don't read on weekends, tomorrow is National AIDS Awareness Day, so be sure to check out Link and Think today, and check back with your favorite participating blogs to read about others experiences with the scourge of our generation.

Other than that, I hope everyone has a grand weekend! The holidays approacheth!

Need a femur? Looking for a spare rib cage?

Where's your head at? Berkeley, of course.