Great Minds Think Alike

2011-07-27T21:26:00.000-07:00

Tonight was a good night. My wife had plans with a girlfriend and I was on solo duty with the kids. Our son's been a bit challenging of late, and he's not had a good night's sleep for a few days. So he's been 'in a mood', as it were.

Before coming home my wife sent me a brief reminder to take his lack of sleep into account and roll with the punches. Not engage. Not react. Not play into power struggles.

I kept that in mind, we had a simple little bike ride, ate dinner, they showered and I read to them. They went to bed, each got up shortly after for one reason or another, and then they fell asleep. Along the way there were a few moments in which I could have reacted negatively, or been pulled into some sort of control related conflict. But I stayed mindful, conscious and on task. It was a success.

What I to find most effective for me, in my own endeavors and efforts related to staying conscious, my personal growth, work ethics, parenting, marriage, weight loss, and any other goal or action/reaction related efforts, is that I have to fully own "cause and effect".

What I mean is that I can't put the blame for my actions on anybody but myself. External sources are beyond my control. How I react to them, that is where the success can be found. That is what I can control. And when I do, good things happen.

When The Sheen Wore Off

2011-07-26T00:29:00.000-07:00

A coule of months ago, I hit a personal high, pace and outlook that was revolutionary for me. At about that same time, Charlie Sheen was hitting the news for being a complete whack-job. Yet I slightly idolized his perspective, and felt a kinship with the optimistic, aggressively positive outlook he was espousing.

I don't have access to quite the same mood altering resources he has available at his disposal, so I've found it a difficult to consistently maintain that perspective. At my peak, during that short run of euphoric outlook, I had a clear, concise and optimistic view of life. I had a strong and firm grasp on what was important. Family. Love. Self-esteem. Focus. Commitment. Discipline.

Then I slipped.

I don't recall exactly what it was that threw me off track, but I do know that I stop being patient, I stop being optimistic, I stop thinking about all of the good things and opportunities. Instead, fell into old habits, finding frustration with situations I could not rationally expect to control, and resentment over my inability to do so.

What a waste.

But there's no reason I could not easily regain my footing, and position atop that mental hill. In fact, there's every reason I should. I'm already 3/4 there. I lost some mindfulness, some "reality-check" perspective that so easily lifted me to that high of highs.

It's simply a matter of remembering how lucky I am to have all the things I do have, to wake up every day able to do the things I do, living in the place I live and having the opportunities I have. And then remembering that it's a limited time offer so I'd damn well better enjoy it.

I'll Never Turn to the Dark Side

2011-07-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

There's something amazing about sitting beside your 7 year old son as he watches "The Empire Strikes Back" for the first time, during the Darth Vader death scene. Especially when your son looks at you with a hopeful gaze and asks if Luke is going to save his dad. The obvious answer being "He already has." It's such a powerful moment of redemption and such an idilic father/son moment. And I got to experience just that this weekend. I believe my son heard my response but my voice might have been cracking and trembling a bit at the time.

I've set my iPhone "lock screen" image to be that of Luke, looking at his mechanical right hand with his light saber gripped in the left. To the average person observing my phone ringing or my unlocking it, I will appear to be just some über geek Star Wars fan. For myself, the image represents something grander. A goal. An objective. A mindset and a way I want to look at everything I do at home, work, and in the world.

It need not be the "Star Wars" image. It could be Oskar Schindler watching the body of the girl in the red dress from Schindler's list, or Timothy Hutton and Donald Sutherland sitting on the back porch of their home in the final scene of Ordinary People. What the image represents to me is the decision point and retaining my conscious desire to be a specific type of person, and live to a specific set of ideals.

When I see this image of Luke looking at his hand, I am reminded that I have an opportunity, if not the incredible gift, of being able to choose my path. I am prone to some level of irritation on a daily basis. I am tested at home, at work, on my commute, in conversation with my wife, in my own internal dialog, to either stay focused on effecting a change for the better, or to going down a knee-jerk reactive path of being defensive or frustrated or annoyed. All by circumstances that my defensiveness, frustration or annoyance will do nothing to improve, and everything to exacerbate.

When I get delayed at a light and miss my train, when I get interrupted at work every time I start trying to recover from the last interruption, or when I find that all three of my hammers at home have been used and misplaced by my son, I can get red-faced, mutter profanity, storm about in a rage,... or I can take it in stride. Because it happens. Daily. To all of us.

Instead of being upset about missing a train I should enjoy the chance I have to take a moment and relax until the next one. Instead of being bothered by being in demand throughout a workday I should recognize that's part of my role. And instead of being bothered by my son's use of and lose of my hammers I should teach him responsibility while being thrilled that he has the interest to build, and more often then not, something he's building out of a desire to impress me and receive my approval.

I don't want to spend time being or teaching negativity. It's everywhere and easily fallen into. But when I step back and look at the path to the Dark Side, it's a far less rewarding and far more difficult path to walk than is the path of being positive, calm, and accepting of the things we have control over.

With the Time Remaining

2011-07-23T22:03:00.000-07:00

I turned 50 this month. That's a full half of a century (and it's not easy to find a use for the term "full half", so I have to milk it). Based on statistics, more than half of my life is behind me and less than half lies ahead. What have I done with it and where do I go from here?

I know one thing: I don't have much time left. Even if I have another 50 ahead of me, with hopefully 25 being ones of reasonable health and full control over my mental and biological functions, that's not much time. Not in the big scheme of things. Not when you step back a few generations and look at how minor the blip of our individual lives are when taken on the whole. My span is nothing in the scope of known civilization. The mark I leave feels as insignificant as a tear hitting the pavement during a monsoon.

I never used to dwell on or think about life, death, and the time between the two. I was relatively carefree, confident, and unconcerned with the eventuality of my own demise. Then I got married, and then I had kids, and then I got old. Or perhaps I just got old. Or did I get wise, which I hear comes with age. However it happened, though, I started looking ahead down a road stretching over the horizon with a much stronger awareness of the fact that the pavement will only go so far. And either at a snails pace or out of nowhere, I'll find myself at a dead end. Literally.

One of the things that has started to happen for me and that I am quite grateful about has been an increasing appreciation of life, friends, my family and my circumstances. When I think about history and all of the horrific circumstances and times I could have been born, or when i think about the geographic or political/sociological climates into which I might have been raised, I'm stunned to be able to have the opportunities I have. Including the opportunity to sit and write about something as self-absorbed as turning 50, when so many other situations might have prevented me from even making it past 5.

I have made some significant changes this past year, mentally and physically, that have helped me get into what I think is a "better place" for entering the later half of my years. I have new ideas, priorities, and intentions for the years that lie ahead. And I have more confidence in my potential to turn these into realities, and to shape my life, and the lives of my loved ones, family and friends, in ways that help promote their happiness and success as well.

I just have to turn intent into action. I have to focus, stay conscious, stay thoughtful and stay on track.

I have a challenge before me.

No Time Like The Present - A Return In Full Force

2011-07-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

I am, deep down and at heart, a writer. I'm not saying I'm a good one, but I think I'm an adequate one, and I certainly have a yearning to do so. I have so many thoughts to share, so many statements to make, so many observations to... uh... observe.

I was on a tear awhile ago. I was writing like a mad dog, but with better dexterity on the keyboard and less foaming at the mouth. There was foaming, though. Look back. There was foaming.

Then things changed. I wrote some deeply personal things and discovered through both my wife and my friends that on occasion, It felt weird and awkward. I would rant about how difficult a day of juggling workload was to be cautioned by my wife (a former HR rep) that it might not be good to do so. I'd write about some deep personal issues related to parenting or fatherhood only to be approached by a colleague who'd read it, had some thoughts, but wasn't a truly close friend, yet now knew something about my personal life I might not have otherwise shared.

It was a time of change, too. I lost my job. We'll, I didn't lose my job, I mean, I know where it is and everything, it's just if I go there, there's this other guy doing it*. I got laid off. It was a tough time. My focus was not on writing, but on surviving.

I shut down the blog and in it's down state, I methodically removed all references to myself. I didn't want to encounter another co-worker who wanted to debate my political observations as I was standing in line for lunch. Being let go helped avoid that specific issue playing out, but you get the idea.

Life continued. I went off, did my business, established a new career path, and I've since thrived. I've climbed, grown personally and professionally, and gotten in the best shape I've been in since I was in about 25 years old. Oh, and I doubled that number this year, too. I hit 50. Or as the kids today call it, "fitty".

Meanwhile, the thoughts, rants, humor and observations have been building up inside of me like a latex balloon attached to a high pressure fire hose. The time has come to release this backlog and pop that sucker. My parenting has been up and down, my outlook has been up and down, my self esteme has been up and down. Yet my blog and my writing, the cathartic process wherein I worked out and focused on all the things that make or break my success, has just been down.

It's back up. And I'm setting an aggressive goal. I want to try and write once a day for a full year. I was doing that before, it's not unachievable, but it will require a significant effort on my part to do so.

I decided to do this last night and I started thinking this morning about what I needed to do to get the ball rolling. What steps I needed to take to get the right tools, images, formatting, style, and all that other crap that would have otherwise gotten in the way, had I not just decided that none of that mattered over the writing.

So here I go.

No pre-thought, no strategy, no established plan of action, just writing.

Turning 50, Every Day

2011-07-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

I was discussing turning 50 with a friend recently, and I mentioned making plans to mark the event and efforts I’d made to reach some personal goals and milestones. Out of the blue he asked the pointed and direct question “Are you having trouble with turning 50?”. It took me off guard. I answered “no” and quickly tossed out a few generalized justifications and disclaimers as to the focus I’ve put on it of late.

The truth is that I am. That bastard. I hate it when somebody calls me on something I’ve not called myself on already. And he nailed it.

It was only after the question was raised that I started thinking it through, and coming to that very conclusion. I am having a hard time turning 50.

I’m putting significant energy into marking the occasion as the milestone it is, a half century, but it does have an impact on me at a deeper level. I honestly think it should, and I think that it’s good that it is, because how I face and approach the years ahead can only be positively influenced by a little introspection, no matter how unwelcome it might feel.

I have been alive for 50 years now. Fifty. And unlike reaching 40, or even 45 with an aggressive degree of optimism, I’ve effectively lived over half my life. I’m over the hump. I’m on the ‘downside’. In all reality, the statical probability that I’ll see 100 is thin. I’ll try, though, for sure. In fact I’ll likely die trying. And that’s where it gets uncomfortable. Acknowledging that there’s less road ahead then that which has been travelled on so far. Consciously realizing that it’s all going to end at some point and knowing that you can’t prevent that.

Looking at photos of my childhood this week, of my youth and of life until now, one thing really keeps coming to mind. “My life”, as far as that which I had significant control in, really kicked in around 20. Before then, I certainly had my family, my friends, numerous experiences and a few traumas, but until I became an independent adult, I was not really in the driver’s seat. When I look back, I see my time until my 20’s as the time I spent “ramping up” for the life I’d live as an adult. The life I’ve lived until now. The past 30 years.

These have been the years during which I took the wheel. Although I can’t make course corrections in hindsight I can see clearly through the rear view mirror. I made some wrong turns, hit road bumps, and had a fender-bender or two along the way. If I’d been given a better map, driven slower, or spent more time planning out my journey, things might have worked out differently, and who knows where I’d be today. But like most young men I was not a fan of stopping and asking for directions, and there was definitely a thrill to speeding and taking sharp corners. And as I’ve aged, perspective, experience and responsibility have helped me become a far more responsible driver.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that the next 30, provided I stay healthy in both body and spirit, can and will be years spent continuing on a journey down a road who’s surface I’ve become familiar with. I know more now than ever before about routes I want to steer clear of, about where I want to be, and the ways I can get there. I also know that there will be a wide range of things to ahead: wonderful and fulfilling adventures and discoveries, as well as painful and challenging things to contend with.

Taking time to consider this reminds me stay conscious of the opportunities I have to embrace all of the joy and happiness available to me. And there is so much. With my wife, my children, and my own and extended family members. My friends who’ve known me for 30+ years as well as those who’ve known me for less than one. People I’ve lost contact with and friends I have daily interactions with.

I’m reminded to stay conscious of the opportunities I have to be a source of positive and good as well. The way I interact with my wife and kids clearly makes all the difference in their lives as well as in my own. The approach I take to colleagues or direct reports in my work day. The time I take to just reach out and acknowledge a friend as such. The way I interact with somebody merging onto the road along side me.

Turning 50 feels like the appropriate point to reflect on what’s important to me so I can stay on course.

Maybe I should start turning 50 every day.

Fathers Day Memories

2011-06-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

Last year I found myself camping on Fathers Day. The opportunity for the trip arose as a chance to join my brother-in-law and his family on a camping trip that coincidentally fell on Fathers Day weekend. My wife was unsure as to whether I would be open to the idea or not when she raised it a few months earlier. But I loved the thought of doing so, and in so many ways, having the chance to share with my kids an experience I shared with my own father sounded fitting and fulfilling for that weekend.

Admittedly, it was not a full blown purist camping experience. We stayed at Pinecrest Resort, in cabins of sorts, with reasonable comforts, and a minute or two walk from the true campsites adjacent to us on this large park, where tents, campfires, family members and smores were all within reach. As well as everything from bike rentals to an open air amphitheater where at night they play "Movies under the Stars". And where we went as a family that night to see Toy Story 3, on opening night.

I have fond memories of camping, including going to ranger-hosted camp fires, cooking hot-dogs, singing songs, roasting marshmallows, and wearily returning to our campsite at the end of the night. And although it was s a big leap from attending a ranger lead sing-a-long to watching a Pixar film, the experiencing of sitting with my children, chatting with my daughter and having my son sit in my lap to stay warm, well, it was something that can and should be treasured as one of the rare and precious, as well as fleeting, moments that make up the reflections and memories that will be stored away until I am in a position of reflecting back on all the years gone by and all the moments that mattered. Be it the day they leave home or between my final breaths, those will be the clips that pass in rapid sequence before my eyes.

As did Andy in the movie we watched, by the time I was about 7 or 8 years old myself, I had amassed a large collection of toys, and I had reached a point of having outgrown many of them, or at least believing I should. I did not want to be associated with baby and child toys. In an effort to show my maturity I said I was done with them and did not want them any more. My father suggested we take those I no longer played with to a Salvation Army bin where we could pass them along to younger kids who would still have the interest in them that I had lost. As I gathered them up, reservation and doubt started to swell in my gut, but I pushed it down, and continued to gather the toys including some I was sincerely not ready to part with, including a stuffed blue bear I had for as long as I could remember.

I was a big boy. I was too old for kids toys. Especially a stuffed blue bear.

We drove to a nearby shopping center, where a large blue metal bin stood placed against the cinder block side wall of a department store building. it was a large rectangular container with a mail-box style deposit chute, through which donations could be submitted, but not removed. It was a one way ticket of abandonment for discarded possessions regardless of any emotional meanings attached to them or not.

I spent the drive relatively silent, focused on the bags at my feet and specifically, the blue bear partially visible blue bear therein. I recall having one or two grocery bags filled, the majority of contents were items I was actually quite ready and quite willing to part with. But the blue bear, not so much. However, I had committed to this act verbally and in my actions. I had made dramatic claims to breaking from my infancy. So I had to follow through, even if it meant discarding a treasured object before I was completely ready to do so.

When we arrived, as my father held the bin door open, I hoisted and released the first bag. I was likely pale and trembling as I did the same with the next, and with a heavy heart, watched as the glass eyes of the blue bear stared blankly back at me while sliding into the dark abyss of the donation container. As my father released the handle, the sharp striking sound of the steel door slamming shut send a startled shudder of finality through my body.

As I entered the car I held my head down, focused on my feet, while my father entered from the drivers side. I sat motionless, hating that I had done what I had just done on my own accord, and feeling completely helpless and incapable of doing anything at this point beyond just keeping my composure until we made it home. The deed was done. The bear was gone. My childhood was concluding.

We sat there for what seemed to be forever while I maintained a steady downward gaze and focused on the containment of my tears. And then the patient, empathetic and understanding voice of my father broke the silence with a single sentence that I have never forgotten to this day. "Do you want to get your blue bear back?". With that, I glanced in his direction and I broke down crying. He knew, likely from the outset and during my selection and bagging of my toys, that this one was more significant to me then I was willing to admit in order to maintain a posture of bravado and independence.

Without making me feel bad in any way whatsoever, he placed his hand on my shoulder and assured me that we would get him back. I believed the deed had been done, the die had been cast and the door had figuratively and literally just closed between that bear and I. But I believed my father more. And we did. By his holding the door open, hoisting me up and lowering me through the small chute and into the bin, I was on a reconnaissance mission. Find and retrieve that bear. At any cost. (And as a side note, my entry must have appeared incredibly bizzare to any bypasser who likely assumed my father had grown tired of me and wanted to pass me along to a younger father who would want to play with me more then he did anymore.)

It was hot, dark and quite uncomfortable in the bin, but my bags, and my bear, were within immediate reach. In the dimmest light that streamed in through the narrow slit of the open chute door, I found and clutched the outstretched hand of the stuffed animal I had so regretted discarding, and my father then reached in for my own outstretched hand, lifting me back up and out, and onto the pavement again. HQ? Mission completed. The bear is in hand. Repeat: the bear is in hand.

When we got back into the car, I was filled with a sense of relief, and more so, great love and support from my father. I'd tried so hard to be strong, to be the grown up boy, yet still had an emotional attachment to something from my infancy. And that was acceptable and OK. It was not only OK, it was fought for. Because it mattered to me, it mattered to him. And is that not one of the greatest gift a parent could ever bestow upon a child?

I don't think about that moment or my heartfelt desire to live that example nearly as much as I would like. Watching Toy Story 3 brought it all back to me, so dramatically and intensely that I returned again the following night to watch it once more.

I find myself routinely swept into the raging current of a day's demands, impatient while getting them into the car for school or wanting time to focus on my own interests or projects over their interest in engaging me in theirs. Yet without fail, when I stop and think it through, I realized that in every exchange, I have the opportunity, and the honor, of giving them the same feeling I had in that moment and still carry with me to this day. Recognizing that what matters to them, matters to me. And realizing that in the near future, just as Buzz and Woody found themselves in new surroundings as Andy drove away, my own children will go their own ways as they grow into teenagers, adults, and strike out on their own. The time I have to be an influence is fleeting, and I don't want to miss the chance to help my child build an airplane, paint a ceramic cup or rescue a discarded toy from a donation bin.

My Thin Excuse Is An Honest One

2010-07-01T17:35:00.001-07:00

I'm on a mission. Having dropped 32lbs and being aggressively on task to continue towards a personal goal, I'm on task and focused like a laser on accomplishing my goal. I'm thrilled to find clothes not worn in at least 4+ years fitting again. Being able to glance down at the scale and see the numbers below 200, let alone simply being able to see the numbers while glancing down without sucking my gut in... it's invigorating.

I've been trying to return to my fighting weight for years, and losing that fight every time. After reaching an all time high, I saw it as an all time low, and committed to focus for just one week, and one week alone, on an aggressive diet change. I stopped riding the bus from Caltrain to work and walked instead. I stopped eating candy and soda. I stopped eating after 7pm. And I stopped ordering lunch (with the self-imposed "carrot on a string" that I'd do so until I broken the 200lb mark). I opted to eat healthier, and in much smaller portions.

It has worked wonderfully, and in that first week I dropped just enough weight to feel traction in the right direction. I've stayed on course. As they say, nothing succeeds like success, and I've been successful in maintaining a daily consciousness about what I eat and what I want to achieve.

What's not great, however, is learning that some of my wife's friends have raised eyebrows and mutter words of caution to her about what might be motivating me when she's conveyed the fact that I'm losing this girth. Contrary to popular belief, loosing weight after starting a new job does not equate to having an affair and going through a mid-life crisis.

It's funny when I think about the concept of a mid-life crisis. I see that as something that somebody who never had time of their own to grow and experience life might have. If I'd gotten married in my early 20's and gone from being a child to a student to a husband to a parent in my relative youth, I might understand the reasoning behind wanting to abandon the minivan for a sports car, getting hair plugs, and taking extra time to chat up the cute girl working the counter at the coffee shop.

But that's not me, not my history, and not in my character. Fortunately for me, my wife knows that. In addition, in the realm of mid-life crisis, i've pretty much worked that out pre-marriage; I chatted up the coffee girl, travelled extensively, drove a convertible, stayed out late, and pretty much tackled it all before truly settling down.

Except for the hair plugs. Those just aren't in the cards for me.

Meeting an Old Good Friend For The First Time

2010-05-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

It's a 3-day weekend. My wife and I agreed to split the day up so that she could have the morning to herself and be kid-free, and I got the same opportunity for my afternoon. I thought I'd dust off the digital SLR and go hike around a nearby open space/estate named Villa Montalvo. I used to go walking there with a camera over 25 years ago and doing so again holds found memories.

But as I walked about, I found myself wanting to be somewhere else, doing something else. I wanted to be writing, and I wanted to be somewhere there were people, somewhere there was "life". I guess I'm getting old, because as much as I love nature and solitude, I'm finding myself wanting to be around and just observing "life" in motion. I'm increasingly intrigued in what each personal story might be, and I want to return to writing my own thought and observations on life, while I still can, and while I still remember them all.

I also found myself missing the family this very time was meant to give me a break from, but that's another story.

My plan was to drive home, grab my laptop (or maybe even the iPad if I could stand the keyboard), get a cup of coffee in downtown Los Gatos and start writing. But the path home, down Saratoga/Sunnyvale road (or as us long-timers call it, Highway 9), lead me past a right hand turn, the last before town, on which resides a street wherein there lives a retired doctor who, through several years, I've built up a friendship with as I've helped him come to terms with the technology of modern day computers.

So on a whim, having the time and inclination, I thought i'd stop by and say hello.

It was in the year 2000 than a co-founder of my startup business contacted me with a simple request. His friend's father, a retired physician living in Monte Sereno (a small stretch of elegant homes located between saratoga and Los Gatos) had a Macintosh, and was having difficulties with it. Could I help? I agreed to, and he gave me the name and phone number of Dr. Roger Goodfriend. As I wrote it down, I remember feeling oddly like I recognized the name, and as I later discovered, I did.

I called and arranged to help him out, and over the course of several initial visits, not only did I work to setup his system in such a way as to ensure the smoothest user experience accessing the Internet and getting online, but I also got to know the man, listen to his stories, and develop a strong respect and appreciation for his character.

I would hear from him every year or two, and i'd stop by for a few hours when I did, to remedy the computer issues and enjoy a visit with somebody I had developed a sort of friendship with. His wife, Sally, would always be the kind and gentle host, insisting on bringing me a drink or food, always pleasantly conveying her appreciation for my help and how they a both enjoyed my visits. When I'd flat out refuse the repeated offer of cash for the work, she'd do something like force a bottle of wine on me, only for me to later find that she'd slipped cash into the bag with the wine. On one occasion I took her up on the invitation to bring my kids by to see the bunnies that inhabited their garden. Although no bunnies were sighted, we observed the rabbit-fur lined openings to their burrows, they enjoyed a walk amongst their garden and the kind gesture of some light sandwiches and juice as they sat in the backyard and dangled their feet in their pool, giggling every once in a while as the automatic pool cleaner came up along the side of the pool and gently sprayed them. To this day, when we drive past that street, they recall that visit and the lady with the bunnies.

Roger clung to dialup for his Internet connection, as his needs were minor, although it was the primary cause for his occasional struggles. He covered his monitor with stickies and post-it-notes as reminders of things we discussed, and would laugh when I would convey to him that the illegible scribble on them, the same cryptic scrawl that only another dr. or a pharmacist would decipher, was clear proof that he was indeed a physician.

But he was no ordinary physician. He was an innovator in his field, and as he related the path and success of his discovery and showed me the numerous newspaper and medical journal articles regarding his achievement, it left me with an even greater appreciation for the man. I've never needed this particular area of medical expertise, but if or when I find myself suffering with a kidney stone and the process to eradicate it involves using ultrasound to break it up, well, I'm going to thank this guy. Back in the early 70's he discovered and pioneered the use of sound waves to break up and thereby remove a calcification (kidney stone) in the urinary tract that would otherwise require (gulp) surgery to remove. He is every mans hero.

As the sporadic visits have occurred over the years, the number of stickies on his screen increased, as did the number of times I would need to repeat the steps and instructions while we would write them down again and again. On one of my last visits Sally gently pointed out the obvious fact that his memory was fading. I remember conveying this to my wife and that both of us felt sad for the situation, recognizing in that moment and that situation how fragile life, and even the memories of a life, can be.

I hesitated to stop today. It's been at least a year, possibly two since I last saw him or Sally, and I've often wondered if and when I might read something in the paper about the passing of local pioneer in the medical field. Even as I drove down the street, I hesitated stopping, and opted at the last moment to not, but instead, to turn around and continue on my way home.

As I sat in my car at the stop sign heading away, the song shuffling on my iphone through the car speakers was all it took for me to realize that I indeed had to stop. The song has long been a personal favorite, a story of a old soldier taking time in a small bar to reach out to another old solider. They engage in a conversation that captures the same things I feel about the exchanges I have had with this man over the years: that the pace of life does not always honor or respect the value of human connection. So as I recognized the song, I turned the car around, parked and started towards the driveway. Just as the garage door began to roll upwards and a man I did not know began walking out.

This gentleman greeted me and I asked if Roger was home. "Yes," he replied, putting to rest the lingering subconscious fear that he'd have passed away and I'd have been too late. "....but he has Alzheimer's" he continued, confirming for me that other lingering fear, and taking away the wind that had only a moment before billowed my sail.

I gave my name, he walked in, and a moment later Sally emerged, a warm and inviting smile of recognition on her face, beckoning me to the house. As I approached she said that Roger had just returned home a few minutes prior and quietly repeated the news of the condition he was in.

I entered the house and was met by a friend of his that had been with him that day, and has been a friend for decades. Roger was seated in a chair, and when Sally introduced me to him and asked if he remembered me, he said "of course I do", which lifted my spirits as I shook his hand and sat with the three of them in the family room. True to form, I was offered a choice of numerous beverages which I in turn, true to form, declined. As I talked to this kind man that I had established a friendship with over the years, it was evident that his recollection of me was indeed minimal and limited at best. He asked my name, who I was, and politely listened to my replies and the conversation between myself, Sally and his friend. As I left, I spoke privately with Sally about his condition, gave her a hug and told here to contact me if there is ever anything I can do to help.

As I sit here in downtown Los Gatos, drinking coffee at a seat by the window while surrounded by "life", I realize that, when it comes to my old good friend, I was indeed too late. Yet at the same time, having the opportunity to say hello and chat awhile, even as a stranger being met for the first time, was a rewarding moment.

Once back in the car, I had stared that song again, got my iPad and drove here, immersed in the bittersweet feelings that come with recognizing the delicate nature of our own existence and the opportunities we all have, without fully knowing the details of the limitations and timelines they come bundled with.

"Well it's time I moved off, but it's been great just listening to you.
And I might even see you next time I'm passing through.
You're right, there's so much going on. No one seems to want to know.
So keep well, keep well old friend, and have another drink on me.
Just ignore all the others... you've got your memories.
You've got your memories."
- Bernie Taupin

Sleeping with the Fishes

2010-05-14T02:00:00.000-07:00

Earlier this evening, after first arriving home and realizing that the clock on the oven had not been reset following the power outage of the day before, I set it, using the time on linda's iPhone, to 6:34.

Then I discarded the bodies of the two goldfish that were found dead in their tank due to the same power outage and the fact that the return of power failed somehow to restarted the filter on their tank. A tank already badly in need of cleaning and now far more so, what with the two dead fish and all.

A short while ago, while in a relatively deep sleep, the light in our bedroom was turned on by my wife, who was awoken by the sound of the timer in the kitchen going off, and that the doors I had earlier assured her I had locked were instead, unlocked.

After arriving home, setting the clock and reading to the kids, I asked Tommy what time it was. From the kitchen he read off "5-something-something" and I challenged him that was not possible, checking instead the nearby TiVo to learn it was 7:26.

Now, at 1.30am, I understand what happened. I didn't set the oven clock.... I started the timer to count down and go off after 6 hours and 34 minutes.

(The doors, well I thought they were locked but I don't fret that stuff. I was wise enough though to not blame the mystery on the spirits of the two dead fish.)

The View From Here Is Spectacular

2009-01-09T15:39:00.001-08:00

I imagine that everybody, at one time or another, encounters difficulties or challenges in life. I've had my ups and downs throughout my life, but on a global scale, I don't really know what real adversity is. People working diamond mines in Africa or struggling through droughts and famine.... they know fear and pain I have never even come close to. So when life throws something unexpected at me, such as an issue I've been facing recently that a few friend know the details of, perspective is a good thing. That, and the pride of making a choice. In situations such as one I'm in right now, some people might throw their arms up in defeat, resolve to bear grudges or even retaliate in negative ways, and some people embrace the opportunity to step up to the plate, accept a challenge, put their best foot forward and take the high road. That's what I'm doing. And even though I may not know what awaits me on the other side, it feels good to have chosen this path.

Electoral Dysfunction

2008-10-10T14:22:00.001-07:00

Do you understand how the Electoral College system works? I never understood it myself, and recently started researching it. Now that I've taken the time to do so, in depth, and attempted to put it into perspective how it was intended to function, and how it works in today's political process, I'm all the more befuddled. Does anybody understand this, and if so, can they explain A: How it's supposed to be fair and just, and B: How it bears any relevance in our modern world? Because it's idiotic, as I see it, and the poorly translated instructions for the assembly of a multi-part christmas present for a child are easier to understand then this bassakwards system.

Ultimately, as we've seen a few times in history, the 'popular' vote does not win the election. So even if 60% of the country says we want Candidate A, Candidate B can still 'win'. WTF? There have been numerous efforts to reform this process and make it based on the popular vote. Every attempt fails to pass Senate or Congressional approval.

The purpose as I understand it is, in the simplest of forms, intended to ensure that every state has a balanced vote amongst the other states. That would make sense in a situation where, for example, a vote was related to something that effects states on the whole, as an independent entity in a collection of states. Let's say that the government wanted to mandate that every state had to contribute a 5% sales tax towards the repair of the New Jersey Turnpike. That would be something rolled up to the 'state' level, so that the population of New York and New Jersey combined would not override the individual votes of the far less populated Wyoming and Iowa.

But somehow, way back when, it became important that voting for the leadership of the country was somehow to be 'balanced' by each state, which makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Because leading the country means representing the country and the occupants on the whole, not by state.

This stuff was drafted and put into place 200 years ago, in the early 1800's, And it's still firmly in place, although it's relevance or purpose seems completely out dated. Let's stop and think about what's still in place and has not evolved along with the rest of things.... There's more than the original 13 colonies being represented. Slavery is long gone and those who regret that are pretty much gone or on their last leg. Women are voting and working along side men. I've got indoor plumbing and don't need a chamber pot or a detached wooden shack outside the house as a toilet. We've advanced medical practices well beyond the dark ages. We're driving cars these days not riding horses. We have instant, mass, national and global communication at our hands, not the pony express or hand-carried notes sent overseas on slow moving clipper ships. We're no longer burning witches at the stake, Hell, even religion has evolved more in the last 200 years then our election system, and that's a pretty bold statement coming from me.

So when will our political process catch up?

Pulling Strings In Order To Win By A Nose

2008-10-08T12:06:00.001-07:00

I should know better than to plant myself in front of the TV and watch yet another effort on the part of the political candidates to catch, wrestle, twist and bend truths simply to sway voters in their directions. And last night's (yawn) stirring and rousing second debate was filled with snide pokes and prods at each other's integrity and honesty with one hand, while the other rested behind their back, fingers tightly crossed, as they made references to numbers, historical actions or plans on their part or that of their opponents. Once again I would recommend readers visit the non-partisan factcheck.org, or google "presidential debate fact check" and read at least three takes and reviews of the facts, one for each party and one you believe to be neutral, such as this summary from the associated press. The bottom line here is that statements are clearly being made that merit follow up evaluation and analysis. Not everything being said is completely accurate and some things are outright lies and intentional mis-characterizations.

Don't you just love our political process and system? Isn't it just great how one can't accept statements being presented as fact, and instead, must dig into them in order to find out who's the biggest liar or lacking the ethics that, uh, should kinda be a part of the office itself?

An Age Old Driving Observation

2008-09-26T14:10:00.002-07:00

This morning, while dropping off the kids on the way to work, I watched a elderly lady slowly drive her car into, onto, and over the curb and down the wide walkway of the church next to my kids preschool. It was both comical and scary all at the same time. I stopped long enough to see that she'd realized her mistake and started working her way out, but it does raise that age old (pun intended) question about what it takes to get a license to drive, and if/when the tests need to be a bit harder and focused not only on vision and road rules, but also on alertness and attention span.

But then again, if they start testing for attention span, I'm screwed.

Lies And The Lying Liars

2008-09-26T10:49:00.001-07:00

To start this out, I want to direct you to my good friend Jess' weblog, where he posted an email exchange with a family member and pretty much nailed down many of my own thoughts and observations about Palin. I could not have said it better. Slower, perhaps. But not better. And off he seems to be, with a few other political posts as he takes his place in the election-race starting blocks, awaiting the starting gun (and the confirmation that it wasn't aimed at Obama from a passing pickup truck) and racing towards a hopefully safe and sane outcome.

Meanwhile, I've been perusing web resources for election related information that's not partisan and actually tells the straight story. Something balanced, neutral and objective. Something that'll give me facts, not conjecture, and allow me to make an educated instead of an emotional decision. Scanning through Fox, CNN, NPR, MSNBC and other sources is completely futile. Anybody that actually believes that the major networks and publications, both conservative and liberal, don't have a bias and provide honest, neutral stories without an agenda needs to think again. Really hard.

There is a website that I am pretty comfortable recommending as a very neutral site. FactCheck.org. I've dug around for some time and looked for any ties or indications that they're other than neutral. Beyond the occasional irate blogger's nit-picky disagreement, I find no reason to think otherwise. These guys tear down both sides, and point out the fallacies, lies and manipulations of both parties.

And it's stunning, absolutely stunning, to step outside the 'receptor' role of seeing a political ad, speech or statement, and instead, peel back the layers of the onion and see just how manipulative both parties can and are being in their efforts to sway votes.

It's also sad, really, when you realize that the political process and who ends up in office is all about who 'sells themselves' while discrediting the other, and less about people making well informed, intelligent decisions based on more than just what they heard in a 15 second slam campaign TV spot, blindly following their supposed 'party affiliation', or apathetically doing what their local church or news organization spoon feeds them as the right choice.

When you look at things in that context, regardless of how McCain/Palin seems like such a wrong, weak and damaging choice to make in my opinion, I can't say I'm not scared that they actually have a chance as succeeding. When you look a the map on Jess's post, there's an awful lot of red. It seems inconceivable, but then so does Bush having served 2 terms. I find this all terribly discouraging. Putting a slight spin on a Woody Allen line from Hannah and Her Sisters, "If our founding fathers were alive today and saw our political system they could not stop throwing up."

I'm The Poster Boy For Holiday Misgivings

2008-09-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

Mentioning "Wings of Desire" in a prior post reminded me of a funny story. The movie has been a personal favorite from the day I first saw it during it's initial theatrical release. It was an "art house" film that was playing at the Camera Cinema's in downtown San Jose. I was so impressed with it, when i first saw it, that I subsequently gathered my mom, brother, niece, and several family friends and took them all, collectively, to see it the following week. I was and remain very inspired by the life-affirming message it has. In hindsight, I don't quite know how deeply it moved those I took for that showing, because it is not a typical film and had some chaotic elements to it as well. But I did so, as sharing it was really important to me at the time.

Later that same year, during the Christmas season, while I had my good friend Matt living as a roommate in a rental house in Los Gatos, I was scrambling to wrap a present and went searching the house for wrapping paper. I found a roll, got ready to wrap one of the gifts, and was disappointed to find that there was just enough paper on the tube to wrap around it once and once only. Even more bizarre was the discovery that instead of leaving it loose, or putting a rubber band around to hold the remanent in place, my roommate had used a piece of tape to hold it in place. That just seemed crazy to me, as it made getting the paper off the tube all the more difficult. Yet there was enough paper to just wrap the gift, so i completed the task at hand and went about my business.

A few days later was Christmas and we exchanged a couple of token gifts, likely a Gary Larson daily calendar in both directions, which was pretty much a standard routine, and a CD or who knows what. Then he started to relay that he had another gift for me but for the life of him, he could not find it. He'd searched high and low but to no avail. He didn't know where it was but somewhere in the house was the movie poster for "Wings of Desire".

I was thrilled at the prospect of the poster, as it was something I really wanted to have, but equally disappointed to hear of it's disappearance. As he continued to explain what little he could about it's sudden absence, he said "I had it all wrapped in a tube and everything". And right then the little bulb above my head got a sudden jolt of electricity. My eyes widened, jaw dropped, and instead of saying a word, I raise a single index finger as to say "hold that thought" while I ran out to the garbage cans on the outside of the house, which had not yet gone out for their weekly pickup the following day.

After I'd used that last remanent of wrapping paper on the roll I found, the one that was just long enough to cover the tube itself, the one that was taped into place, I folded the tube in half and stuck it into the trash. Because, you know, it was just an empty tube. Or was it?

I found and removed the folded cardboard tube from deep inside the trash can, took it into the house, unfolded it, and gently removed the creased "Wings of Desire" poster from within. I'd mistaken a wrapped gift, one in a tube, to be the final bit of available wrapping paper in the house. Fortunately for me the damage to the poster was not too extensive, and once it was put into a frame the crinkles were barely detectable without looking for them. I still have it, framed and stored in the attic at the current moment. I am now thinking of bringing it to work to serve as a daily reminder of the message within of the film. I came across the image of the poster the other day while drafting the aforementioned post, and it's hard to ever see an image of it without remembering how close I came to never getting the gift I would have unknowingly thrown away.

It's Quiet. It's Too Quiet...

2008-09-25T11:55:00.001-07:00

We just wrapped up our portion of a massive project. I'm exhausted. I've been on edge and on guard 24x7 for the last month or two. I've had to be in 'attack mode' for much of it, trying to anticipate every little possible issue, circumventing it, yet never seeing the ones that'd come up instead. So now the scrambling chaos turns to sudden silence. I spent yesterday waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never did. Now I'm standing on the sidelines, having the opportunity for the much needed break from the chaos. But there's a part of me that's feeling out of place, suddenly, and a bit off balance. I spent so much time leaning forward that I don't remember how to stand still. And I suddenly understand, in the most abstract and trivial way, of course, how war veterans struggle with returning home to the 'normal pace' of daily life, away from the front lines, where they'd become accustomed to the adrenaline.

Who Cares What I Think?

2008-09-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

"When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?"

So begins one of my favorite films of all time: "Wings of Desire". The poem, like the majority of the film, is spoken in German, but the subtitles lay out a thread of thoughts regarding the innocence and questions of childhood in comparison with those of an adult. It also serves to illustrate the joy that can and should be found in the simplest daily things, such as the unique tastes of food, the warmth of a cup of coffee held on a cold winter's morning, or the recognition one finds when looking into the eyes of a loved one.

I posted an entry a short while back that related my having thoughts about this site, it's purpose and it's content. One of the two thoughts, apologizing for unintentional offense, was discussed in that post. The other was tabled at the moment, but I'm now getting back around to it, and it's good that I did delay, as recent events have given this second topic greater meaning and purpose.

In looking at what I do here and why I do it, combined with some comments and observations from family and friends, I've had to look back at some of my posts, trends, recurring themes and general tone. in some ways, it's embarrassing, while in other ways, I'm quite proud of what I've amassed in what is really a short time.

When I step back and review this site, the praise, criticism, and impacts, I have to ask if there's a return on investment to be found here. What do I want from this in the first place?

And frankly, who cares what I think?

I wanted to be a writer in one of my "nine lives". You might not understand the "nine lives" reference, so allow me to explain. It's a game my wife came up with that is intended to be a conversation starter, and to give party goers and new acquaintances an opportunity to become a bit more familiar with each other. The premise is simple; if you could do anything with your life, and you had nine lives to live, what would you do or be? The answers can range from being an actress, a teacher, an astronaut, a musician, or anything else..... and for me one of mine would be a writer. Hell, I even used to fantasize that I'd really do it. My first book already had it's title, "Is It Me?", which would be my own rambling observations on the multitude of oddities and abstract aspects of our lives and society. "Things that make you go hmmmm", but without Arsino.

Obviously, that never got written, but some of if not most of it has gradually found (or is finding) it's way onto this website. Interspersed of course with odd tales, random thoughts and updates on my life and times.

As to why: this is my one chance and my one opportunity to leave something behind. Some day, hopefully at least not until my kids have grown to adulthood and started out on lives of their own, I'll take my last breath, and when I do, I want there to be something around that captures who I was, what I thought, why I thought it and what mattered to me. I want it to be something that my children, friends, and extended family have.

I have nothing to help me understand or learn about my own father. I suspect my mother's kept a diary and a journal of some sort, and has likely written down many of her thoughts, feelings, joys and disappointments, for myself and my brother and family to have and read long after her time here is over.

In my own way I'm doing the same sort of thing, but on a billboard.

These efforts goes out to the world, so in many ways and on several occasions, I've hit the publish button with a moderate degree of reticence, simply because some of the things I put out there are pretty personal. Things that I do want to leave behind, do want to reflect on, and do want to declare for posterity. But this website will not only be read by the few close friends I have and my immediate family. It might be read by any number of people. Keep in mind that I don't have very many close and intimate relationships wherein I'd openly declare that the deaths of innocent children in a school shooting brought me to a point of sobbing, that I have such a strong position against religion, or that I wrestle with being so in awe of the joy of having kids at one moment while I might easily hit the rewind button at another. I disclose a good deal here, openly, and i've received both compliments and admonishment.

I've had to walk a fine line and use judgement about what I write here. Yes, skimming through, one can find numerous occurances of my complaining about this, that, or everything all at once. But conversely, one can find me talking about the love I have for my wife and kids, about the joys of some of the work I do, and frequently about the treasure and wonder that is the life we each have, and how precious and valuable it is to recognize. And of course a fart joke here and there to lighten up the mood.

My wife's stepfather passed away from cancer shortly after our wedding. He was, by all accounts, a wonderful man, and from the brief interactions we had, I completely agree. I've often felt cheated that I did not get to know him better, and I also have looked back on the time leading up to his final days and I've felt like a complete chicken-shit for not having made more efforts to get to know him better while I could. Yet one thing really puzzled me; I could not understand why, when he knew that he was dying, he was not making every effort to journal or chronicle his life and thoughts. Perhaps that's not something most people think about, but I sure do, and I would expect most people would given the opportunity to see what a difference it would make for those left behind.

So when I ask myself who might care what I think, well, I do. Obviously. Enough so that I want to at least make an concerted and continued effort to capture the larger thoughts, along with more reflections back on my own life, so when I'm not there to tell the story, it'll be here to tell itself. And when I'm not around to reflect on the love I have for family and friends, or to share an insight I had about priorities with a co-worker who's letting the little frustrations get to them, it'll be here and perhaps will touch them, or an unsuspecting by passer, and it'll do them some good. And for my children, to know that someday, when they're adults, they'll have an opportunity to have a deeper glimpse into the man that is their father, means a good deal to me now and will hopefully mean as much if not more to them down the line.

I know I might attack faiths that are held dear by many, I might go on a rant about social or political situation that is completely against the grain for a reader, or that my sense of humor might be a bit farther off kilter then one might appreciate without calling it sick. I know that a co-worker might stumble across this some day and it could change the way they look at me, not necessarily in a positive way. I have to admit that the idea has occurred to me that a prospective employer, for example, might be offended by something they find here while casually looking at my website after realizing I have my own domain, and it could be such that they'd formulate an adverse opinion of me. All these things have crossed my mind, especially when I post something that I might not freely mention in a casual conversation.

But I feel compelled to do so, and will continue to do so, with the intent of asking the questions that continue to come to mind, answering those I discover along the way, and describing the view from here as best as I can. And yes, I'll likely slip in an occasional toilet joke, too.

Brown Nosing

2008-09-19T14:05:00.001-07:00

Early this morning, after stopping in the cafe and filling my large commuter coffee cup with an ample supply of coffee, a co-coworker stopped me between buildings, and commented that they'd been thinking that I had some bad skin condition, but they'd figured out what it was.

"OK" I replied as as continued to enjoy my fresh cup 'o joe.

They proceeded to explain that they had noticed a brown path on my nose a week or two back, and they had been wondering if there was something medical behind it, but over the course of the past two weeks they had observed it's presence, absence, presence again, and finally, it's origin.

They sit in daily morning meetings with me and noticed that, after drinking from the cup, the brown spot would appear. Sometimes I'd be conscious of it and wipe it away, and other times I'd be oblivious and walk through the rest of my day with a small coffee marking discoloring the tip of my nose.

Sadly, I'd been made aware of this awhile back by another co-worker that simply pointed it out the moment it occured. I have tried to adopt a habit of sipping differently but this particular coffee cup has a flip-back seal that retains just enough coffee splash and it's position when drinking is to rest directly on the tip of my nose. Leaving the coffee residue behind. Resulting in the opportunity for others to refer to me as a brown noser with valid reason to do so.

Time for a new commuter mug.

Waffling

2008-09-10T14:38:00.001-07:00

We have frozen waffles in the freezer. Whole grain ones, but still, 'processed'. It's pretty much what I resort to when the kids breakfast menu needs to deviate from the standard daily grind of cereal, or what they like to call 'Grown Up Toast', which is just a huge frickin' piece of sliced sourdough coated with almond butter or jelly.

When I got up this morning I did so in the mood to 'make' waffles. Not just pull them out of a box and toss 'em into the toaster, but to break out the waffle iron and pancake mix. I wanted a few moments of 'control' over something in the daily routine, and I wanted to mentally pause and have the calming 'retro' experience of mixing up some batter, pouring it onto the hot iron, smelling the cooking dough and waiting for the steam to subside, indicating that they were ready to eat.

This ties into my own experiences as a kid. I have strong sentimental memories of waffles occasionally being made in our home. It was not a routine thing, making it special, and to this day there's something about the smell of a warm waffle, melted butter and a paint-bucket sized container of maple syrup that just screams 'childhood'.

Of course, the presence of blueberries in the fridge added to the event, so with the help of the kids, the batter was mixed up, blueberries folded in, and the 'waffling' ensued. It took just a moderate amount of time over the frozen approach but the therapeutic benefits were worth doing so. It made me feel a tad calmer, which is something I've been trying to integrate into my daily life. I'm trying to walk slower, take on less, and just not let things seem so serious all the time.

Making blueberry waffles by hand falls into that theme quite nicely.

Healthcareless

2008-08-21T12:24:00.001-07:00

I've been trying to schedule an MRI all week without success. And I don't mean that I have been trying to get the actual MRI this week, just to get it scheduled. Why is another story, but right now, I need to vent. I went to Stanford for an initial appointment and they said I'd have to get an urgent MRI done. I wanted to get it done at a nearby location instead of going all the way back up to Stanford. I thought it'd make it easier, and expedite things. What a joke on me that has turned out to be.

To start things off, Stanford tells me I have to call the local facility and schedule it, and that they'll get insurance authorization. I do. The local facility says no, they don't do the authorization, Stanford does. So I call Stanford back and they say they'll do it but they need all this detail about the local facility. Phone nbrs, contacts, address, stuff like that. So I call the local facility, get all that info, call Stanford and leave the details on a voicemail. I do the same the next day. I hear nothing. So a couple of days later I call and they say they didn't get all the info, even though I left it all. So I give it to them yet again. They in turn fax the paperwork to the local facility. I then have to contact the local facility to schedule an appointment. Of course during all this, I have a real job, things to do at home, and only a set of hours in a day that I can also get this scheduled. So a couple days later I finally do call the local facility. The person there first says they can't find my paperwork. Had I not pressed they'd have stopped there. THEN they tell me it's not authorized and needs authorization. Wasn't that the whole point of this exercise in the first place? So I then call Stanford, and they tell me that they did contact insurance, authorization is not required because that facility is within their coverage, and there should be no issue. The person at the facility should know that.

Oh, BTW, remember that this whole thing has been an "URGENT" request for an MRI.

Why the HELL am I supposed to be the middle man here? Wouldn't a great deal more have been accomplished by Stanford talking directly to the local facility? Ultimately that's what they did do, conveying the fact that no approval is required, but the dolt I talked to was as clueless about the approval as they were about finding my paperwork.

I ended up throwing my arms up in disgust and discouragement. I hate this crap. I need to walk away from this for awhile. This is arcane and idiotic. What's the point of trying? Why should it take this much intervention and pursuit to schedule a frickin' "URGENT" MRI to begin with?

Where's the "care" in "healthcare", anyway?

Running On Empty

2008-08-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

My wife and I have an ongoing "joke" about the fact that every time she drives my car, it's on empty. It's not true. In fact, every time I put in gas, with only the rarest of exceptions, I fill it up. Then I drive it until the warning light turns on and do it again. So it's either pure random coincidence that the majority of time she drives it falls at a point where it's getting to the bottom of the tank. In any event, it's with great trepidation that I give her the keys, on both of our parts.

The important word in this post's title is not "empty", it's "running". Because that is what I seem to be doing every time I get in my car. I'm running. Running late. Running to work with only a moment to spare, if even that. Running directly home because I've yet again been side tracked by a late meeting or hallway inquiry that prevents me from making it home at the 'usual' time. In fact, every time I ever do stop for gas, I do so when I'm already late for wherever I was heading.

I'm tired of running. I'm tired of having to work every morning, aggressively throughout the day and into the evening again at home. I'm tired of not sleeping, which only makes me all the more exhausted and irritable. I'm tired of demands on my time that are violently colliding with each other. I've even been recently challenged by my management about the work on my plate and the focus I put into completing it. If only they knew how full my plate really is.

I'd like to be everything to everybody. I'd like to be the friend that helps fix computers, gets iPod deals, shares movies, or just replies to personal emails in a timely fashion. I'd like to be the father that does not get irritated when my kids wake up and come into our room for the 3rd time in the middle of the night and interrupt the limited sleep I do get. I'd like to be able to have taken a summer vacation and spend time relaxing with my family instead of having to battle with work about my rights and need for a break or to have to face the disappointment at home when vacation has been denied. I'd like to be the husband that takes time to curl up with my wife to watch a romantic movie or just stare lovingly into her eyes without feeling a panic about the fact that the rushing waters are moving me further down the river from the rapids I'm trying to swim over. I'd like to find time to follow up on medical appointments that are becoming essential for my heath and well being. I'd like to feel that everybody isn't standing around, tapping their foot, glancing repeatedly at their watch and wondering what I'm doing instead of being where they expect me and doing what they expected, and I'd like to have the patience and fortitude to start saying 'no' to requests or needs without feeling bad because, ultimately, if I just try harder, I could probably say 'yes'.

I'd also like to understand how other's appear to easily manage while I continually struggle.

Oh, and I'd like world peace.

Summer Break

2008-08-21T05:44:00.000-07:00

I watched and listened to the kids in the back yard Sunday morning. And they were playing quite harmoniously. It's not typically the case and it was a very welcome change. I thought to myself that, perhaps, they were maturing a bit and getting beyong the usual fighting and control struggles that come from being strong willed. I also briefly thought to myself that as nice as it was, someday there will be some situation where a scream is followed by one of the two if them running in to say that the other was hurt, and then there'd be some bloody face or twisted limb awaiting me.

I just didn't think today would be that day. I thought wrong.

I was just out of view of them from within the house when I heard my daughter start to scream. And it was one of those screams that signify real injury. As a parent, you learn the difference between a cry due to not getting something they want, struggling over possession of a toy or being honestly hurt. And this was an 'honestly hurt' scream. I came to find her lying face down on the pavement next to a kid-size picnic bench. I approached, fearful that a tooth of two would be dangling from her bleeding gums. She was intact and not cut, but she was still struggling to get up while crying hysterically that her brother had hurt her arm.

It turns out that as they were playing and she was atop the table holding the stringy branches of a Magnolia tree as vines and pretending to be a monkey, he thought it would be fun to pick up the large inflatable "sit and bounce on" handled ball and swing it about. He accidentally knocked her to the pavement. He knew immediately that he had hurt her and was immediately apologetic. But I needed to focus on her, so I told him to go inside.

I held her on my lap and got her to stop sobbing so heavily and tell me what had happened and what was hurting. It was her arm that hurt, and although she was able to move her fingers it was evident that there was something wrong because touching or slightly moving it, however so gently, caused her to cry out in pain.

I took her to the emergency room and she was a real trooper, but quite overwhelmed and pensive. After a few x-rays including one that caused her to wince and tear up in pain, they informed us there was a fracture on the inside of the elbow, and it'd need a cast. They put a temporary splint on, and the following day, she was sporting a pink cast from her wrist to above her elbow. She'll be wearing it for the next 4 weeks. Fortunately, it's waterproof, so the upcoming plans for a water slide at her 5th birthday party are not completely ruined.

As for the boy... well, he was incredibly sad and sorry about the whole thing. He's been caring and sympathetic and saying he's sorry repeatedly. There's no doubt that he's learned a valuable lesson here. So hopefully I can check this off the 'parent experience' list and move on.

When you see me next and notice the grey in the beard, factor this into the overall cause.

You've Gotta Keep On Your Toes

2008-08-20T15:49:00.001-07:00

I did some spray painting last Sunday, cleaned up afterwards, and continued on my merry way. Today, 3 days later, expecting the temperatures to be in the 80's, I wore shorts and sandals to work. It's Apple. No big whoop. Except that, while sitting in an executive review just now, surrounded by lots of upper management, I glanced down to see a clearly painted toe-nail protruding beneath me. My own. Flaked, but painted nonetheless.

I'm just glad the color I painted that door was white and not red.

Passing Thoughts : Bad Idea #265

2008-08-20T12:16:00.001-07:00

A co-worker forwarded a funny commercial and it lead me down a dangerous path. Lesson learned: NEVER watch funny commercials on a laptop while drinking coffee. Especially when the funny ending comes up.

A World Of Pure Imagination

2008-08-15T01:42:00.002-07:00

I was a voracious reader as a child. I cut my teeth on the corners of "The Cat In The Hat", and pretty much every Seuss book in our neighbors' collection. I'd been given carte blance to visit and 'check out' any title I wanted, and I read them all. Repeatedly. Those and if course, "Where The Wild Things Are".

In Pennsylvania, when I was around 9 or 10, I'd discovered "Stuart Little" by E. B. White and Ronald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", long before Gene Wilder deftly laid claim to the persona of Mr. Wonka and decades before Tim Burton would twist and malign the story to the Depps of despair.

As a parent, I now have the joyous opportunity to pass along the same treasures to my children, and I happily do so, reading Seuss to them at bedtime, or singing along with them in the car to the soundtrack of "Willy Wonka....". And I've been looking about in hopes of finding my copy of Stuart Little, so I might start reading a chapter a night to them for my own pleasure as much as their own.

And as a parent I feel an obligation to help them enjoy the exploration of their imaginations, while steering them clear of too many scary scenarios or more mature situations. We'd rented a DVD recently that was a child cartoon series, but after just a brief viewing I turned it off because my wife and I both agreed that the main character spoke rudely and disrespectfully to peers and adults. We may seem greatly conservative but as far as we are concerned, there's plenty of years ahead for them to be a part of "the real world" and for the time being, we want them immersed in the innocence and wonder of youth. Just as we were.

E. B. White also wrote "Charlotte's Web", and I have the 2006 movie version in our collection. They've not watched it yet because I feel that they're still a bit too young and effected by the sadness in some of the things they have see. For example, my son saw "Beauty and the Beast" and was very upset when the Beast was cut and hurt by Gaston. So we are careful. Tonight I skimmed through "Charlotte's Web" to check it out. It's quite delightful. But at the same time, if I can't get through the death scene of the spider without welling up myself, I'm hard pressed to imagine that they'll do any better. So we'll be waiting on that one and perhaps diverting them towards "Babe" in the mean time.

The Radio's Playing Some Forgotten Song

2008-08-02T10:00:00.001-07:00

One of the free applications available on the 2.0 iPhone software is AOL Radio; access to AOL's streaming of radio stations from all over the country. I thought I'd poke around in it and see what it has to offer, and under the 'local' sections, for the SF Bay Area, I came across "KFRC".

KFRC was an AM radio station when I was 12 years old. Now it is an FM station, and streaming over the web as well. When I used to listen to KFRC. I did so on a portable radio, about the size of VHS tape, with a kazoo quality speak, an extending metal antenna that would only retract to the point where the last segment had been bent some years before, and a sliding dial tuner with faded frequency numbers. Yet to this day, "Radar Love" never sounds as genuine without the crackling static of broadcast radio.

My Saturday mornings were routinely spent doing chores, mainly the yardwork we grew to refer to as doing our "4 hours". If we expected to see the weekly payoff of a cash allowance, along with other tasks, it was mandated that both my brother and I would each spend 4 hours a week doing things like mowing, weeding, raking and any other general landscaping tasks. Of course at that age, we'd start at 9am and claim to have started at 7am. Our parents only challenged us on rare occasions although I'm sure they never expected it, and saw the 2hr net effort as the ultimate objective. Tricky. I'll be doing the same with our kids at some stage as well.

During these outdoor work-sessions, that portable radio would travel with me, and I'd always make a point of tuning into KFRC in order to hear Casey Kasem's "Top 40" countdown. All the pop hits of the day were counted down from 40 to 1, with Casey's tidbits and tangents intersperced along the way. It became a ritual of sorts to listen to it weekly, one that lasted for years. Yet this is something I've long forgotten as time has shuffled me along.

Clicking on the KFRC icon in the iPhone player for AOLRadio took me to their stream, which paused for a moment to load, and to my surprise and joy, Casey's voice was the first thing I heard! It turns out that every Saturday from 6-9, they re-broadcast his count down the top 40 hits from the 1970s, featuring a different year each weekend. The vault has been unlocked and you can hear the American Top 40 exactly as it originally aired!

I can smell the fresh cut grass. I can feel the warmth of the sun on my back as I pull weeds, I see our dogs "Bernie" and "Teagle" running about and playing, and I hear the torn-cellophane-speaker sound of Golden Earring once again. Through the technology of today, I'm taken back to yesterday. I'm listening to the show now, and it is as if the stream is not just an old radio show, but a direct feed from the recesses of my childhood memories as well.

The VCR and the DVD

There wasn't none of that crap back in 1970

We didn't know about a world wide web

It was a whole different game being played back when I was a kid

Wanna get down in a cool way

Picture yourself on a beautiful day

Big bell bottoms and groovy long hair

Just walkin in style with a "portable cd player"?

No, you would listen to the music on the am radio

Yeah, you could hear the music on a am radio

- "AM Radio" by Everclear

Passing Thoughts : Lime Dis-Ease

2008-08-01T23:50:00.001-07:00

I was at a friends home recently (JJG for those in the know) for an "ice-cream social" with lots of families. The kids took to the ice-cream and swarmed about the deck playing with numerous toys while the men congregated in the kitchen for beers and ladies sat around the patio in a semi-circle talking about, well, whatever it is they talk about when they're in a circle. They only know 'cause if you walk up on them, they stop talking.

In any event, as we were offered various choices of libation, including a range of beers, Corona was offered to one of the fathers. Their response was "Do you have lime"? It seemed an innocent question, JJG checked, and said no. "I'll just have water then" was the man's response.

I'm writing this because I'm drinking a Corona right now. With lime. And it's excellent. But had I no lime, it'd still be excellent. It's not as if "lime" is in itself an ingredient, it's an addition. Yet for this guy, for whatever reason, the absence of the lime was a deal breaker. No lime, no Corona. Water was more preferable at that stage.

JJG and I exchanged a puzzled looks with furrowed brows, and he got his water. And I got the Corona he would have otherwise taken. The last one, it turns out. Sans lime.

It was excellent. In fact I'll go out on a limb and say it tasted better than water.

No Redemption Song Sung Here

2008-07-31T22:38:00.001-07:00

I glaze over at most small talk. Seriously. Chat it up with me for more than a few minutes about the weather, your friend having an odd habit of sniffling when they're tense, or that funny thing you observed last Tuesday that caused you to laugh so hard you passed half your latte through your nasal cavities, and I'll start to get glassy eyed. I'll feign interest and attention but my mind will gently tip-toe away and start working on some work related problem or contemplate some of life's greatest mysteries, like why they brought all that luggage on a 3-hour tour.

I had a chance to visit today with my brother in law, who was in the area on business, and who I've not seen for several months. Chris is an awesome guy, and I consider him a friend as well as a relation. We differ and disagree on various topics, including exchanges on this very website around global warming, for example. But we also agree on others and share a mutual respect for each other's rights to our opinions. The conversations we have are some of the more interesting, challenging and engaging ones I get to have, so I look forward to them.

Today, as we bantered back and forth about such complex and typically touchy things as science vs religion, politics and of course, American Idol, he made me aware of this recent situation in San Francisco, where a 21 year old gang member with two prior convictions on his record shot and killed a man my age and his two sons in broad daylight after they momentarily blocked his way at an intersection. Perhaps there's more to it than that, but we talked about it in detail and our mutual disbelief at not only the event, but the political circumstances surrounding it.

I posted an entry here back in Feb 2007 and as we talked, the same sentiment ran through my head. I’ll PAY for the Bullet. Really. Please. I honestly would, without hesitation, love to cut to the chase here and get this sociopath out of all of our way with a simple exchange of my own personal pocket change for ammunition. Yes, I'm that giving and generous.

Sure, there's clearly a line one must walk when talking about capital punishment and an 'eye for an eye', but you know what, to be brutally honest here, it's not a line that is difficult to draw. Intent and repetition equals a threat to the safety of those around us who, unlike this piece of shit scum-bag waste of space with no regard for human life, actually give some consideration to the rights of others and our own limited rights to act in ways against each other.

And here goes the circus, folks, because now there's trials, lawyers, defense strategies, detainment, incarceration, appeals and more on the horizon. All, once again, being footed by, guess who? US!

Do I think that, perhaps, with time and experience, this young man might go the way of "Ellis Boyd Redding" in The Shawshank Redemption? Do I think with some growing up, soul searching and rehabilitation, he'll likely one day follow in "Red's" footsteps, sit before the parole board and with eloquent defiance and disregard for their opinions, tell them that "I look back on the way I was then then, a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are." Sure, I guess there's always a chance that could happen, but you know what? Screw 'em. I'm not willing to pay to feed, clothe and shelter him on the random chance that there might be some redemption 20 years down the line. And it's not because I'm a cold, heartless jerk with no consideration for the circumstances and sufferings of my fellow man. It's because his crime and pattern are completely and utterly unforgivable and intolerable. Game over. You lose. Show a pattern of criminal behavior and then you intentionally, maliciously take the lives of three innocent people, then you lose yours.

Now here's the real kicker, and the thing that had Chris starting to escalate his voice, accentuate his gesture and cover me with a light dewey spray of spittle as he launched into justified rant; it appears this guy is an illegal alien, he should have been deported after the prior offenses, but because he lives in San Francisco, which is a 'Sanctuary" city and opts to not report his status or act on the otherwise procedural deportation, he was allowed to stay.

This is beyond belief, and it speaks to the far broader topic of immigration that I'll save for another post, but as far as I see it, any initial infraction by somebody not already a citizen immediately voids their eligibility to do anything but board a one-way passage back home. Period. End of discussion. Why in the hell would we think otherwise? Why, if the whole point of even tolerating let alone turning a blind eye to illegal immigrants is to enable them to have an opportunity to better themselves, would we possibly allow them to stick around after doing something like beating a bus passenger or stealing from a pregnant woman? What kind of screwed up backwards logic could possibly rationalize that? It's idiotic, and you can bet that a hard line drawn and then followed without deviation would send a strong message to those who actually do want to make the most of the opportunity to not f-it up by doing something that will get your ass back on a boat bound right back to where you came from.

I wish they'd carted this dip-shit off on the first offense. I wish they'd cart everybody off on first offenses. My heart goes out to the widow in this case, my head spins at the thought of what those last moments must have been like for that father and his two sons, my eyes role at the idea that taxes I pay will be spent on his defense and possible incarceration in any fashion, and my stomach churns to consider that this might have been prevented by having more stringent practices in place. This guy should have been shuffled onto a boat a long time ago.

Would I hesitate to stop the processing of his deportation papers so he had a second chance, or would I wince as the execution orders were processed and approved? Quoting "Red's" parole hearing speech one last time here... "you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit."

Putting My Finger On The Smell Of Fire

2008-07-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

Most of us, at one time or another, have been exposed to the smell of an electrical fire or a burned-out motor. It's the dank, dark, heavily spiced smell of burning copper, electronics and plastics all combined with a pinch of cumin for taste. It's distinct, and when you smell it, you tend to seek out the cause with great concern and immediacy. After all, the shorting out of a hair dryer or the overheated washing machine motor can lead to greater issues in the home beyond wet locks and dirty dishes. An electrical fire in the home can bring the house down. Literally.

Tonight, while cleaning dishes and moving about the kitchen, that very smell caught my attention while close to the toaster and cappuccino maker. It was strong enough to make me stop in my tracks and start wildly sniffing about in search of it's origin. I unplugged both of those appliances, inspected them closely, and while I could not isolate them as the cause, the scent persisted in that immediate area.

As I moved some stacked papers to better evaluate the potential source, I noticed a drying finger-painting or two made by the kids earlier during the day. As I moved them aside in order to gain easier access to the outlet behind the counter, the smell of an electrical overload disappeared. Or better stated, it travelled with the paintings.

Yes. I'm hear to tell you that Crayola finger paints have the exact same smell as a burnt-out electrical appliance.

You would think, given that there's literally nothing 'natural' in the ingredients of that stuff, and that it's already one chemical away from a street-light and two chemicals away from a terrorist's weapon, that the makers might have found a simple way to neutralize the smell in the lab. Yet somehow, they've overlooked the olfactory impact of that particular product on the adults who buy it and bring it unknowingly into their homes.

Perhaps it was intentional. Perhaps there actually is an additive already there, intended to elicit momentary confusion in the lives of already harried and disoriented parents, just for some executive malfeasants own disturbed personal pleasure and satisfaction.

That, at least, I could respect for the mere creativity and innovation.

Watch Your Language

2008-07-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

I had errands to run this morning, as did my wife, and when I talked to her at about 11.30, she indicated that she was at a shop with the kids and would be home for lunch by 12.30. Shortly after 12.30, the phone rang, it was her, and she was making a big deal about how well behaved the kids had been for her during the morning drive/shopping. She wanted to reward them by having me meet them for a family lunch. So we agreed to each drive to a favorite local spot, Aqui, in Willow Glen.

While there and enjoying our meals together, I got a text message from a friend who had been intending to swing by our house and pick up some computer stuff he needed to borrow. He lives only few minutes away. He also is a fan of Aqui, the restaurant we were at, as mentioned.

The exchange was brief and simple. Here's what I interpreted...

Him: "You around?" (Are you at home so I can drop by?)

Me: "Aqui" (No, I am at Aqui, having lunch)

Him: "good time?" (having fun?)

Me: "Si" (Yes, we are having a good time. So good I said yes in Spanish.)

About 30 minutes later, as I drove up to our home, I recognized his car on the street and found him inside talking to my wife, who'd arrived moments before me. In typically rude, geek engineering fashion, I skipped the social pleasantries, greetings and salutations that my wife so graciously reminded me of a moment later, and just blurted out "What are you doing here?" or something to the effect.

It turns out that he knows Spanish, or at least one word more than I know. And that word is "Aqui". "Aqui" means "Here". So as he stated, we had two very different conversations at the same time.

Here's what he interpreted...

Him: "You around?" (Are you at home so I can drop by?)

Me: "Aqui" (Here. Yes, I am at home.)

Him: "good time?" (is this a good time to come by?)

Me: "Si" (Yes, come by.)

Shorter Of Breath...

2008-07-02T09:29:00.001-07:00

One more lap around the sun. One more year has come and gone. There's really so many more important things on my mind and my plate then taking more than a moment to pause and recognize the carving of another tick-mark on the wall of time. Likewise for my wife, who's in the midst of solo kid-watching while work is being done on the house. I've repeatedly insisted that this be a low-key day. I'm even willing and quite happy to pick up some take-out on the way home for dinner. As long as there's a couple cards from the kids and a candle to blow out, this will be a quiet day and night for me.

This Will Not Blow Over

2008-06-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

We're having some work done at our house, and in the course of starting it, we were informed today by the contractor that our heater/AC ducts were in a pretty serious state of disrepair. We've long had issues with the heat or AC not making it to the further points of the house. The home inspection indicated that there was a crushed duct at one point, and we had that repaired, but the flow of air still never quite made it very strongly to the back bedrooms. Now we know why.

When we were told about the issue today, it was stated that some of the ducts were rusted and cracked. I mentally envisioned a few minor cracks here and there in what was otherwise in decent shape. Holy crap, I could not have been more wrong. The section I was able to see is beyond belief. This does not look like a modest degree of aging and normal wear. This looks like the hull of a 100 year old dingy pulled from the bottom of the ocean. The insulation is tattered away and the brittle flaking rust is barely able to withstand the slightest impact, as seen here. It's incredible that any air ever made it beyond this point in the first place, and this explains the heating and cooling bills we've been dealing with.

I don't supposed we have any legal recourse related to the sale of the house and the condition of these. It wasn't even found or reported to be this bad in the inspection, which I can only assume is due to this being relatively obscured and inaccessible.

We'll be having this fixed, so the costs of the work being done just shot up a couple thousand dollars, but it's obviously not something we can or should delay.

Putting The "Order" In "Disorder"

2008-06-23T07:53:00.001-07:00

At lunch last Friday, a friend imitated my known tendency to pack all the garbage from my meal into the single largest container, typically a drink cup. It was not clear if it was solely for the purpose of mocking me, or, as I prefer to see it, they'd suddenly realized the calming benefits of doing so, as well as the need for all of us to practice this in order to restore a sort of harmony with the universe.

The act of "trash compacting" is one of several obsessions I wrote about a couple of years back, most of which remain daily habits that, for some bizarre reason, are only known to me as key to preventing the world's rotation from suddenly coming to a dramatic and catastrophic halt. Were I to stop, all non-compulsive occupants would find themselves hurling towards the stratosphere in an ironically unified and organized fashion, while those of us who've consistently kept our currency sequenced and oriented, vacuumed in a repeating pattern and laced our shoes so the top laces of the right shoe cross to the left while the top laces of the left shoe cross to the right, will remain to inherit the earth, allowing us to ensure that all toilet paper rolls are hung with the paper rolling forward and to the front.

This all came to mind last night as I was washing, drying and putting away dishes. I suddenly became aware of a patterned behavior that I typically don't seem to notice. Yet this time around it caught my eye and I had to pause and marvel in hindsight, (with a reasonable degree of fear for my own sanity at the same time,) at the method and intention that clearly runs through my subconscious actions without forethought. While stacking dishes and cups.

I noticed it when I came across a stray cup to store, and became conscious that I was taking measures to an extreme, because I had stopped to determine it's appropriate placement within the existing stack. As you'll see from the image below, which I snapped on my iPhone (once I stopped shaking my head while buried in the palms of my hands), I'd been sequencing the colors. The first was the stack of plates and bowls. Notice the colors of the bowl stack match the colors of the plate stack. That went unnoticed. But when I found the stray cup, a light blue one, I had to insert it between the pink and dark blue. That's when I realized I had been stacking to a pattern; orange, pink, light blue, dark blue, yellow.... and over again.

Mine is a tortured existence. A sequenced, aligned, and organized tortured existence. :-)

Don't Bother Me. I'm Napping.

2008-06-19T09:45:00.001-07:00

This is a reminder that the way we structure our day is not conducive to our nature. My good friend Brian emailed this to me, and the timing is perfect. Just yesterday, in a 2-3 pm meeting, I found myself nodding off. REALLY nodding off. Not just 'getting bored', but actually having a hard time holding up my head or keeping my eyes opened. I was afraid I'd suddenly snort awake and draw the attention of the 20+ people and presenter at the time. I had attributed it to a heavy lunch, but it's always been the case that I tend to wind down between 2-3. I actually returned to my office at 3, locked the door and laid back on the couch for a light rest for about 20 minutes.

Per this chart, I'm an Owl. And per this chart, I did just what I should do. Just what our bodies want us to do.

Everybody I've ever discussed this with has concurred that they can get into afternoon slumps. And this explains why.

One has to wonder what effect, over hundreds of years of habitual practice, our habits might have on our natural behavior. Perhaps done long enough, we'll evolve into beings more adept at going 16 hours without feeling the need to rest. It would not surprise me.

For the time being, though, I'm considering trading my lunch time for snooze time. I tend to either have meetings or work through most of my lunch breaks as it is, so perhaps blocking 2.30 - 3pm as my own private downtime might benefit me in numerous ways.

Don't Bother Me. I'm Napping.

A Road Sighed Rest

2008-06-15T19:47:00.001-07:00

The parenting of twins can often feel like driving an off balance, rusted, wobbling 1940's jalopy, the type that's only a speed-bump away from leaving you sitting amongst a pile of metal pieces, smoke, and steam, still holding a detached steering wheel as the rear tire slowly rolls past you. In addition, you're perpetually running 10 minutes late for a critical appointment when the radiator cap suddenly shoots skyward beneath a pillar of steam, while the sputtering sound of a dying engine drives home the reality that you've lost all forward momentum.

That's a weekly, if not daily occurrence for my wife and I.

For the past few years, I've leveraged an annual opportunity to park the car off the road, in the tall grass, and get out for a breath of fresh air. I walk around it, kick the tires, straighten the front left fender, reattach the handle on the right side passenger door, and then I step back several hundred yards to just look at it from a distance. I allow my ass to recover from the lack of shock absorbers, stretch my legs, massage the cramped fingers that have so tensely gripped the steering wheel as I've attempted to guide it through dips, potholes and unexpected detours, and take stock for a few moments, before climbing back into the front seat.

Today is that day. Today is Father's Day.

Historically, I first used this day to get away for a longer stretch of time. Last year, though, I realized mid-day that there was someplace I wanted to be much more than away, which was an epiphany of sorts. And this time around, I opted to pivot the previous year's activities. I had a wonderful light "French" breakfast provided at home, then I took a few hours with each child alone, to just go out and about, focused on having some father/daughter and father/son time. And the later part of my day was set aside for my own solitude and self reflection.

So, as I sit on this stump of a fallen oak tree, just a few hundred yards away, I can hear the engine clicking sporadically as it cools in a modest summer breeze. The mixed smell of burning rubber and over-heated oil on the manifold are faint, but present even at this distance, perhaps permanently embedded in my clothing, if not my psyche. The squeaking sounds continue to echo in my head and the rocking motion has made me feel a tad off balance for the first few moments that I'm back on solid groud. Walking around it, at a distance, gives me the opportunity to see it from the other side of the windshield. To see it as the whole, and not just as a passenger or a driver.

Doing so causes me to sigh with a smile of comfort and conviction, because it refreshes my memory as to the many reasons I do so love this classic, regardless of the costs required to keep it running. Because this was something we built from scratch, my wife and I, and it has taken us places, every day, we'd never have travelled to without it.

Sure, some places have been rocky, treacherous, and greatly challenging, especially when the car was going a bit faster then we expected. We've slid when we've hit patches of ice, we've weathered storms where we could barely see the road ahead, and we've run into a few close calls with head-on collisions as well as our share of fender benders. I won't even begin to try and count how often we've run out of gas or barely made it into a filling station, or how often we've had to ask the other one to take the wheel for awhile out of sheer exhaustion, disorientation, or simply to prevent an oncoming moment of road rage.

Yet we've also been surprised to find ourselves in places who's grandeur defies words. We've found ourselves in what were once were familiar places, and have seen them anew, with a fresh perspective from angles we'd not have reached without this vehicle to get us there. We've journeyed in this to a barren pasture, planted seeds, and watched them grow under our care. We've met others along the road, driving in their own contraptions, and have made wonderful friends through our shared experiences. We've traveled in this to places that have allowed us to learn more about ourselves and our lives that we would have never know had we not ventured down a path only this could take us on.

And for me personally, I've learned a great deal about the value to be found in taking what might appear from afar as a rough and tumble ride, by just getting in, turning the key, and pressing the pedal. OK, perhaps it took some coaxing. And yes, it's been rough and tumble, alright. But so are most of the journeys to places of great heights, beauty and wonder. And as many a fellow traveler or explorer will tell you, it's not always about the destination. The person that climbs the face of a mountain will likely not summarize the experience simply down to the short time spent at the top, but far more on getting there and back.

Quoting the ancient chinese proverb, "The journey is the reward"

And it has been.

Walking Through The Past

2008-06-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

Every second Saturday of the month, there is an electronics flea market at a nearby community college. I've been once before, and it was like taking a stroll down electronics-memory lane. Everything from old voltage meters, reel-to-reel tape decks and radio tubes, through turntables, early model Powerbooks, PalmPilots ,software packages like Aldus Persuasion, and all the way up to last generation Airport Extreme base stations can be found there.

In many cases, If I didn't know better, some of this crap was likely once mine, or even my father's. It's a small little event in a sectioned off part of the parking lot. Tthe sellers seem to be of a rather worn-'n-torn variety, and the shoppers are seasoned geeks and aging ham radio operators.

Somehow, although I don't quite feel like I completely belong, I still feel somewhat strangely at home.

In the ham radios and voltage meters, I smell the must of my father's workbench, feel the hardening rubber surrounding red and black alligator clips I'd tinker with, and hear the firm audible click of the dials and switches I'd turn to various settings, never having a clue about what they'd do or why. And in the interim booths, I recognized turntables and 8-track players, and a darkroom timer identical to one I used for years. I find vinyl albums warping in the heat of the summer sun, with covers I instantly recognized, including "Face The Music" by ELO and the original broadway cast recording of "Jesus Christ Superstar". I see 90's Apple hardware, including things I used in my work and international travel, groundbreaking in their day, which now seem as antiquated as the tube based radios a few aisles back.

I took my camera with me yesterday morning on a solo journey to walk the rows lined with memories, and was struck by how many things I felt a history and connection to, as well as the idea that the stuff I walked right passed without any interest might likely mean the world to somebody about to stumble across it in the next few minutes.

I don't hoard things. I don't hang on to too many items that no longer serve a purpose, regardless of the importance or history they might have to me in decades to come. I have a few mementos of people, places and times gone by, but they fit in a box or two at the most. So having the opportunity to casually saunter about a wide range of things from one's past can bring a moment of reflective comfort during the chaos of dealing with the present and looking towards the uncertain future.

Great Lyrics : Death Cab For Cutie : Plans

2008-06-15T01:14:00.000-07:00

You may tire of me

As our December sun is setting

'Cause I'm not who I used to be

No longer easy on the eyes

These wrinkles masterfully disguise

The youthful boy below

Who turned your way and saw

Something he was not looking for

Both a beginning and an end

But now he lives inside

Someone he does not recognize

When he catches his reflection on accident

Urine Good Company

2008-06-13T15:05:00.001-07:00

Now this was an awesome post! I loved reading it. Especially after visting the men's restrooms at Apple's worldwide developer conference last night. Now, I've known people that can consume an entire 6-pack, and 20 minutes later, refill one of the empties from 5 feet with nary a splash. But the bathrooms at the developer conferences... they were disgusting. I saw more than one person nearly lose their footing, including myself, as they attempted to navigate the swampy tile terrain. In addition, I loved reading this writers reflections of my own admitted discomfort at the act of using a toilet at work. The occasional recognition of a co-workers badge around their ankles in the stall besides you changes everything in the next meeting you have together. Especially if they're a grunter. Oh, and as a parent who's had to shuttle their son or daughter into various facilities in various locations, let me just say that nothing builds the hamstrings then attempting to hold a 30lb child aloft from a squatted position in order to prevent them or anything but your own sneakers from touching any physical surfaces.

Go read this: http://www.dooce.com/2008/06/13/rite-passage

I Can't Believe My Ears

2008-06-01T01:46:00.001-07:00

I'm getting old. It happens. Hell, who doesn't? And if they don't, the option is worse. Still, some of the things related to aging really don't make the process quite so enticing. Things like being unable to loose weight quite so easily, hair growing out of places like your nose and ears but no longer your head, back pains, failing memory spans and lots of other stuff that escapes me at the moment. But hearing has become a recurring struggle. I actually went and got my hearing tested recently and I was quite surprised to be told it was normal.

Normal, that is, for somebody my age.

What's become a recurring issue has been an apparent loss of being about to 'filter out' background noises. Not only in crowded places but at home, when something's being said while my heads half buried in the freezer as I scoop out some ice, or if I'm rattling a grocery bag while the garage door is closing. These all seem like situations that I once had the ability to selectively tune out, while honing in on the words being spoken. Not anymore. Now, it's all just a jumble of equally pitched and volumed overlap, and more often then not, I have to crank my head and mutter "Eh? What's that you're sayin', Sonny? Speak up, yah wipper-snapper."

It was actually at my wife's insistence that I get my hearing checked. She's reached that point where loving concern has given way to irritated annoyance. I don't blame her one bit. But it does seem to happen more at home then anywhere else. I think a part of it has to do with her own muttering, and I'm sure she'd say it's probably my own subconscious tuning-out of her voice. Whatever the case, If I have to ask her to repeat herself too many more times I think my next anniversary present will be a hearing aid.

Oh, and speaking of hearing, have you heard about "Mosquito Ringtones?" It seems that ringtones are available that only specific age ranges can hear. You can test it on their website and it seems to work. The bottom line is that kids 18 or younger can have ringtones that their parents can't hear, enabling them to covertly leave the room to take a call without the parents even knowing that their phone is ringing in the first place. I have to give them a nod for having thought of such a sly little workaround.

Ruffled Feathers

2008-05-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

Walking between buildings on campus today, the squawking of several crows in a large tree, already being observed by two other people, gave me a reason to stop and investigate as well. It turns out there was a large hawk on one of the branches, and according to the other bystanders, it had been chased by the crows into the tree shortly before they stopped to check it out. It was amazing. I'd guess its size to have been roughly 18" tall. I watched for several minutes while other's came to do the same, and one of the bystanders indicated that the hawk has actually been on campus for a couple of weeks, flying between two trees, upsetting the crows and living off the land.

Which explains the recent absence of squirrels running around the grounds.

As I walked away, it flew low across the campus, chased by the crows, and into a tree near the cafe. It was a spectacular sight.

A Side Thought: Having once had a ground floor window office by a tree, I had a front row seat to the activities of the squirrel population. Every time I see the squirrels, I can't help but think of the character Milton, in the film Office Space, muttering about having his desk moved and making a veiled reference to mating squirrels.

"I, I don't care if they, if they lay me off either, because I, I told Bill that if he moves my desk one more time, then, then I'm quitting. I'm going to quit. And I told Dom too because they've moved my desk four times. I used to be by the window, where I could see the squirrels, and they were married."

"But We In It Shall Be Remember'd"

2008-05-25T23:56:00.000-07:00

Some time around 1998, my wife and I travelled to Denver, Colorado from San Jose, California by train. We were fortunate enough to have met a much older couple over dinner, and learned that the husband was a World War II veteran. We had a couple of meals together during the trip, and some interesting discussions about his having been in the war. It gave both of us a chance to refresh an understanding and appreciation for what has been referred to as "The Greatest Generation", and what going to war meant in that day and age. We established a brief routine of correspondence for the following years, including a letter we wrote after having seen "Saving Private Ryan", expressing our gratitude for his having served during that time. The correspondence faded over time, but we've never forgotten the Schlegels, and we've never forgotten the sacrifices.

Memorial Day was first established to honor and remember the dead from the Civil War, and has since grown to encompass all casualties of war. Some articles I've read recently indicate a continued trend of lessening attendance at Memorial Day services, or general consciousness or awareness of the meaning behind the day. I don't necessarily agree, and my own awareness has only increased over the years.

There was a time in my 20's where the day simply meant a paid holiday and a chance to go hit the beach in Santa Cruz and usher in the summer with friends. I never gave a second thought to the meaning behind the day, it's history, the lives, or the impact of those that fought to protect our freedoms. I would occasionally come across war documentaries on TV and wonder who had the interest to spend time watching footage of something that happened so long ago. Now, I am in earnest to learn about and be aware of these events in our history, and I can't imagine turning a blind eye to the gesture of devoting time, once a year at an absolute minimum, to reflect deeply on and remember the people who gave their lives because they believed it was the right thing to do.

I've wanted to watch "Band of Brothers" for at least 6 years now. And tonight, I started doing so, specifically for the purpose of putting my thoughts squarely into Memorial Day. I'm several hours into it, and will complete it tonight and tomorrow. In addition, as we've tried to do every year, we'll be attending the Memorial Day ceremonies in Saratoga, at the cemetery where some 700 veterans of wars or military service are buried, including my wife's father and grandfather. The kids are intentionally being exposed to this, with the hopes that they'll gain an understanding and appreciation for the history and purpose behind the day, and that they'll carry on the tradition and recognition so that in another 40 years, the day will continue to have meaning, and be cause for remembrance.

Passing Thought : Counter Proposal

2008-05-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

Can't the people who make decisions about bathrooms in businesses give some consideration to the choice of materials used for the counter? Why must they install a sink counter top that does not easily and immediately indicate the presence of water? Those at our offices are a glossy grey, white, and black granite pattern which appear to have been designed to specifically camouflage any presence of water, which just happens to get splashed about throughout the day. Eventually, somebody sets a computer or laptop into the water, or worse, leans up against the counter and has their clothing begin to absorb the liquid before they have any chance to react. It happened once to me some time back, and now I have to constantly be on the lookout.

It just seems to me that some forethought would prevent the likelihood of such things occurring.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Fire On The Mountain

2008-05-23T15:19:00.000-07:00

As you know, there's been some massive fires in the nearby mountain range. You must have heard about it. Unless you live in a cave. Except if that cave is on the burning mountain, in which case, the prior "cave" reference is negated. In any event, there's hills-a-burnin' in the vicinity. So this morning, as I walked out with the kids for our weekly "bringing in the trash-cans" parade, the strong smell of dense smoke filled air filled my nose, and the sky was startlingly and surrealistically gray. It was an eerie vision, while the smell was oddly comforting and reminiscent of a fireplace on a winter's dawn.

I drove up highway 280 last night to meet up with my good friend Tom, who was up from Santa Monica on some business. We had a great time catching up over a couple of beers, and while driving home at about 11.30pm, through the dark rolling hills between there and the Santa Clara valley, I caught sight of a spectacular "Harvest Moon". You know how the moon typically looks like a distant penny, while there's occasions it'll appear as a massive planet almost within reach? Well, the latter was the case last night and the moon itself was a stunning yellow hue, unlike anything I've seen before. As I thought through the possible causes for the "moon illusion" I was observing, I wondered about the unique yellow color, and if it was due to the fires and the smoke in the air.

This was one of those moments that you wish you had a camera, but my iPhone did not suffice.

My iPhone Is Filled to the Rim

2008-05-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile I post some complete "nerd" related tidbit and lose 70% of my readers for a day. This is that day. Because something really unique has cropped up, and as banal and pointless as it is, i just had to note it here. I filled up my iPhone. No... I mean, to the brim. To the brink. To the edge. So much so that if it were a glass of water you'd not be able to pick it up without spilling it. And that's just something I've never seen happen.

The way things work with iTunes and the iPhone is that you select what you want on it; Photos, Movies, Music, Addresses, Email, etc. Then when you connect, it syncs the data over and will either advise you in advance that you haven't enough room for everything you're loading on it, or it'll load it up but you'll always end up with some amount of unused space left over.

Except today. As the image above shows, for the first time that I can recall ever seeing, it's completely full, with no free space, and it didn't warn me in advance that I was trying to load too much stuff. And this never happens. There's no option to simply say "fill it to the brink" as there are on an iPod Shuffle, and even then, those end up with some free space as well. No, this is a complete random fluke occurrence, one I can't imagine I could reproduce if I tried.

You'd think I'd have better things to write about. I do, actually, I just don't have time right now to focus on the more personal posts, so I'm throwing this out.

I know... I'm such a geek.

But then again, perhaps not so much.

I was recently watching the Ricky Gervais HBO show "Extras" on DVD, and a specific scene had me rolling on the floor laughing my ass off, because it seemed to be completely directed at me. I am a geek, yes, but I never really got into watching "Star Trek" as much as some of my far more "uber geek" friends. I've sat with them on numerous occasions and just glazed over while the sound of their voices echoed on about some TNG or Firefly or Battlestar Glattica related topic. So imagine my surprise and amusement at this scene with Patrick Stewart. Pay particular attention to the exchange in the very end.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IURfntimnlA&hl=en]

Swabbing The Decks

2008-05-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

Our San Diego trip included a day-and-a-half visit to Legoland. We went there last year for their birthdays, and the kids were quite excited to go again, with a strong interest in their water park setup, which was ideal in the 80-degree weather. I have to say that I've never seen a water park setup as well designed as this. Most water parks seem to have water slides, and areas with water spraying out of the ground or from surrounding pipes, but these guys have raised the bar well beyond reach of my [admittedly limited] knowledge of any others. They've erected a massive pirate ship, with textured rubberized flooring on all surfaces. There's water spraying from all sorts of places. There's water gun "Cannons". There's a couple of short slides, and there are steps, rope-stairs and winding walkways all over, encompassing the structure. On top of the ship sit two massive "buckets" that continuously fill with water until they reach a tipping point.... and then they tip. The flood of water is immense and engulfs the ship and all occupants every 5 minutes or so. (Click the image to see a larger example I found on somebody's flicker page.)

On day one, I ventured up a few steps in my street shorts and shirt, staying relatively dry, to accompany my daughter to a higher point, forgetting about the second of the two buckets. As I was unexpectedly enveloped in a steady stream of cascading water, I watched my wife, my brother-in-law (who surprised us by showing up unexpectedly), and a cluster of sheltered adults all laughing at the situation. They laughed, my daughter laughed uncontrollably, and I laughed too. The next day, I returned with more appropriate attire and a change of clothes, and joined them as we scrambled about for a good chunk of the day.

Back To The Future

2008-05-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

We travelled to San Diego last Wednesday for a vacation and a medical visit. My daughter has scoliosis, and unlike the "typical" kind where there's a curvature to an otherwise complete spine, she's actually missing one of two bones on one side of her spine, causing the moderate bend. We've been talking to numerous doctors over the course of the last couple of years as we've been monitoring it, and we've found a specialist that comes highly recommended, only his practice is in San Diego. So we took her down for an examination and a visit and we came away with some very optimistic news.

There does remain a possibility of needing surgery, but at this point, the angle has not really moved or increased as she has grown. There's some factors related to bones and tissue, and the way she is developing is not causing the angle to increase. There's a chance it will as she goes through growth periods, and we'll be monitoring it closely so we'll be able to take the appropriate actions should any be needed. But there's also a chance she'll never need anything surgical. It's not a guarantee and there's a stronger potential that there will be a need for something to be done, but it's a welcome relief to know that, for the time being, she'll be able to avoid surgery, and if she does have to face that at some time, she'll likely be doing so when she's older then 5 and more capable of understanding the need and reasoning behind it.

We're Not So Brain Dead After All

2008-05-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

When I learn something that disproves a long-held belief or assumption, I like to share the findings with my friends and family here. Something I heard today gave me cause to do a bit of quick research, the result of which was a pleasant surprise. It actually makes perfect sense, but because it's something that had been presented as fact and asserted for many years from various sources, I just took at face value. But it's not. It turns out that human's actually do use ALL of their brain, not just 10%.

(Current administration aside, of course)

Human brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blessed Are The Children (subject to creator's discretion)

2008-05-02T07:34:00.001-07:00

While watching a documentary this week about WWII, an aging fighter pilot who had dropped massive amounts of bombs on the city of Tokyo, killing up to 200,000+ civilians, more than those killed in Hiroshima, was reflecting on the conflicting feelings he had at the time regarding his role in the taking of the lives of innocent men, women, and children. He had sought advice from his church, and with a detached resolved, he relayed how the pastor simply said that he knew God had a plan, that although we might not understand it, it was clear to him that they were doing Gods work.

My daughter was born with Nystagmus, a neurological based eye condition. She also has a spinal deviation that'll likely require surgery, as well as a few other issues she's had to or will have to face. Yet she's actually quite fortunate when compared with the severity and degree of complications that many children contend with. Through my own internet searching, as I researched and grew to understand her own conditions, I would occasionally follow a meandering chain of links and find myself reading about or seeing images of far more severe and horrible conditions that afflict newborns. Disfiguring, disabling and life altering conditions. The kind of things that break one's heart to imagine what struggles lie ahead.

One of my strongest memories of time spent with my late mother-in-law is the last Halloween we spent together. She had come down from Roseville and was staying with us during a time at which my daughter's "special needs" school had a field trip to a popular Pumpkin Patch. I joined them at the event during my lunch break, and as Nicole and I wandered about, observing many of the innocent children struggling with various, severely debilitating diseases, we talked about how horrific it was. She stated then and several times following that she could not believe there was a God, and would not believe any greater being would subject an innocent child to such extreme adversity and suffering.

I could not agree with her more. Yet from experience, I know that those unwavering in their faith or devotion might be inclined to rationalize away these occurrences as being a part of God's plan. They might suggest there's a lesson the child and the parent have the opportunity to learn, that any suffering of the child will be rewarded in Heaven or another world, or most abhorrently, that there's something related to justice or punishment associated with the situation.

To all of those ignorant assertions, as to the suggestion that God might have a plan through which 100,000+ innocent victims would be justifiably sacrificed, I say "bullshit". No, that's not strong enough... I scream, shout and cry out loud, "bullshit!"

There's no higher power setting forth the edict that any of these acts should happen. This is the chaos and randomness that is life. Nothing more. Shit happens, much of it by complete chance, and some of it, the most awful stuff IMHO, at the hands of man, in the name of greed, money, and religion.

Yet there are many people that need to belief there's a reasons for these things, and need to attribute them to fate, karma, God, and any other number of imaginary causes. In fact, there is a spectacular documentary from 1988 by Joseph Campbell entitled "The Power Of Myth" that covers this very human need and condition in great detail. A wonderful article about this show can be found here, and I've included the text in this post for posterity. And for local friends, I have it if you'd like to borrow it.

It's the 21st century, people. Believing in myths has no more place in an evolved society then do witch burnings, slavery, or long distance commercial featuring Carrot-Top. I can only hope that the trends to question, re-examine, challenge and ultimately discard such antiquated beliefs and practices continue. I like to think that the world my children become adults in will be a world guided not by myth, mysticism or blind faith, but one guided by knowledge, research, facts and evidence.

Half n' Half At The Coffee Bar

2008-05-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

Every so often, on a TNL, I'll reserve some time to sit solo in a favorite coffee shop in Campbell and write or catch up on emails or side projects. And that's just where I am and just what I'm doing right now. But the coolest thing is that the place is as crowed as usual, but there's something clearly different from other visits I've made. Of all the laptops in use, 50% of them are Macs! There's as many MacBooks and MacBook Pros around me as there are Windows based CPUs. That's not been my typical observation. Perhaps this is a sign...

A Time Lapsed Photograph

2008-05-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

This image has come up a couple of times in as many days, and I wanted to take a minute to share it with the world. I decided to annotate it and publish it here for posterity.

It's a personal favorite for many reasons. One being that just looking at it transports me to a place in my memory, filling it with sounds, smells, textures and reminisce of a days long gone. But it also captures an era and an array of objects that are not only familiar to me, but to many people who grew up in an engineering environment in the same era.

When the topic of "Punch Cards" came up in a conversation at work, I brought this image up and it was a huge hit. Then, this morning, while my son was scrolling through photos on my iPhone and asked about this one, it struck me how dramatic a contrast it was to be looking at an image representing so many things that are now contained within the object displaying the image itself.

I've said it before... It's amazing to see what advances have been made in technology in 10 years, let alone 30. And as I look around my desk at my iPhone, stacks of DVD media, several MacBook Pro's and this MacBook Air, pens on a whiteboard, some laptop batteries, a USB thumb-drive, and s small scale laser printer, I can't help but imagine what my son might think of all this, and how antiquated it will be, when he'd look back at it in another 30-40 years.

Nor can I imagine how he'll be viewing it.

I do know that I'd be as amazed as I expect my own father would, could he see the things on my own desk today.

Throwing The Baby Out With The Holy Water?

2008-04-28T23:04:00.000-07:00

I'm in an interesting position. My wife and I talked last night about her desire to provide the kids with some sort of spiritual exposure. Given my rather open and firm stance against organized religion on the whole, she's had to compromise a great deal of her own needs and desires for a spiritual routine, and along with that, she's concerned that the kids have limited exposure to moral teaching, golden rules, or anything of a spiritual nature when the only source is within our home. We don't have any routine practice or make any conscious effort to consistently do so.

In addition, the topic of private schools came up, one option being Catholic schools, of which she herself is an alumni. From what she, and a couple of my close friends have told me, there's really little/no religious dogma pushed or forced on the students, and the benefits, for them at least, greatly outweigh any drawbacks. I know at least two 'non believers' that are paying to send their kids to Catholic schools and they're fine with it. I'm on the fence, as doing so at this age seems a bit premature.

In addition, there's a requirement of Baptism, which really bothers me, as it's, IMHO, a completely idiotic requirement and ritual. I am dumbstruck to imagine that anybody really believes that the act of immersion in water under the right circumstances somehow means anything at all in this world or the next. It's inane, which in this case, is "insane" with a silent 's'. I mean, come on, now... really. The act has no more meaning or bearing then having been the last one tagged "it" during the last hide 'n seek game I ever played. I've not since walked through life forever "it", just as many, many people raised in religious situations have not spent their life being Christians or Catholic's simply because of a baptism. I know it means nothing, but in the grand scheme of things, I find it incredibly frustrating, then, to support and participate in a pointless act of compliance.

I'm reminded of one of my favorite analogies: a story of a woman who, when cooking a ham, always cut the ends of the ham off. When asked by her husband as to why she did this, she said "I don't know... my mother always did so I have too.". Curious as to why, the husband calls his mother-in-law to ask about it, and she says the same thing as her daughter did. "It's how I learned to cook a ham from my mother.". The son contacts his wife's grandmother, and when asked about the practice, she simply says "my baking pan was too small."

Now, I had my upbringing, with minimal involvement in religion, and my wife's was similar, but with a bit more early adolescent experience, primarily through having attended a catholic high school and making catholic friends. But she's not attached to any religion or belief system either. If I had to summarize it from my point of view, she's spiritual, but not religious. She believes there's something more and something greater then just our physical presence and being, but she's not convinced that any belief system properly or completely represents it. She's far from an atheist. Perhaps she is a very very moderate agnostic but only in the sense of any one religion having the absolute answer as to what might be going on.

We've tried, a couple of times, to look into Unitarian churches over the years, but those either integrate fundamental religious beliefs within the context of "any and all faiths are represented', or they are way to "out there", wherein the smell of pachouli incense fill the room while drum circles and gregorian chants take the place of organ music, choirs and the congregation reciting "Lord be with you" in rote fashion.

It seems that there's really nothing, at this point, in our society, that provides a routine opportunity for a sense of community , teachings of core human values, and exposure to the concepts of spirituality without being tied to a religion. I can't consider going along with something I absolutely do not believe in simply to gain the benefits that might come with it, or to discount the negative aspects as well. If I was able to make that compromise, I'd already be a Mormon.

Our kids are closing in on 5 years old. My wife's desire is to introduce them to spiritual ideas and the general teaching of moral practices. She's not talking about bible classes or any religious teachings or discussions at home or outside of a weekly visit to a church. I can't say I object to that idea completely, because it's an eventuality that they'll be exposed to religion in many other ways, but I struggle with the fact that they're as young as they are, they're still impressionable, subject to taking fantasy as reality, considering an adult an authority figure without question, and subject to fears that may be incorporated into a sermon.

I recognize that there's two parents involved, that my wife's gone without a sense of spirituality for many years, and the options are highly limited. I'm willing to let her give it a shot and see how it goes. But I'm not completely sure how I feel about it right now.

I Never Imagined I'd Say This, But..

2008-04-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Yoko.

Given that the central message in that song, let along much of the body of his work, was far from dogmatic or religious, it's amazing that the producers of this film had the nerve to do this. Then again, from what I've read about the movie, that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Yoko Ono Sues Over Use of Song 'Imagine' in Movie Challenging Darwinian Evolution]

The Avian Bird Flu Out The Window

2008-04-24T14:20:00.001-07:00

Along the lines of my prior post about capitalizing on "Green" awareness, while home last night, listening to the news encompass everything from the political race to the FLDS compound in Texas, my mind wandered through some of the big "scares" of the last few years, and it came to a screeching halt on the Avian Bird Flu. Whatever happened to that, anyway? There was loads of press and visibility around this issue a couple of years ago, and most of the articles were very bleak and gloomy. And although the issue remains one of great concern within the medical community, and there's plenty of monitoring and tracking of the situation ongoing, there's no media coverage. Nobody's talking about it any more in public forums.

I have to admit that it's things like this that make it easier to understand how some of my extended family scoffs at the global warming concerns. With so many cries of "wolf", how does one know the difference between a false alarm and a real threat?

One thing is for certain. You can't tell the difference if all you rely on to keep you informed is the main stream media.

Selling The Green Sieze

2008-04-23T13:21:00.001-07:00

It's happened. It was inevitable. It's the way it always goes. I saw it coming. In fact, I remember watching it, consciously, post 9/11, and being as disturbed then as I am now. Yet it keeps happening. I guess they can't help it. It's what marketing is about. It's what they do. So when terrorists attack, or floods wipe out a portion of a cities residence, or the climate change becomes more of a prevalent concern in our lives.... there'll be a clear change in the ads you see, as products and companies try and cash in, jump on the band wagon, and position themselves at the center of what's foremost on peoples minds. Shortly after 9/11, it was all about our country, our families, our safety, and their two-ply toilet tissue or the true value of their hardware stores. Today, as you must see, more and more ads are centered around being "Green". Everybody has some angle their spinning about how they're the green spot, the green stop, the green solution and the source for all things that'll save the earth.

It makes me wince, because it's predominantly insincere. There are books and websites all over now, dedicated to "green marketing". And you know, you just know, the decision to adopt the ad campaign isn't at all about changing the world, reducing carbon footprints, addressing the need for global awareness about the actions we need to take in order to turn things around. It's about seizing the moment, and those green-dollars being spent by people actually concerned and taking action. I can just see the board room of executives examining a pie-chart showing the growing $'s being spent on green products, and discussing how best to get that money spent with them instead of somebody else.

Call me bitter. Cynical. Cranky-pants. But I'd not be saying this if I'd not seen it happen so many times before.

The Horror... The Horror...

2008-04-06T23:24:00.001-07:00

I read an interesting article last month detailing a move on China's part to ban "Horror" films in their country. The broad description of "Horror" is stated as "wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror.". Apparently it has to do with trying to "control and cleanse the negative effect these items have on society, and to prevent horror, violent, cruel publications from entering the market through official channels and to protect adolescents' psychological health.". The discussions and comments on the few sites I've looked at are generally incensed and offended at the censorship. I, on the other hand, wish we'd have something similar here.

I've mentioned my feelings about the horror genre in the past and feel like spending a bit more time here discussing the conflicts I have with it. I'll go on record as having been a big fan of movies like "Halloween","Alien", and even though I walked out on it when i first saw it, "An American Werewolf in London".

Examining the reason I walked out of "An American Werewolf in London" might be a good place to start. If you've seen the film, it's relatively tame by today's standards, but at the time of its release, it was as cutting edge as they got. And the "cutting edge" that caused me to leave the theatre and await my friend outside was the slicing of the main character's throat in what ended up being a dream sequence, within a dream sequence.

It freaked me out, big time. And I was appalled at the violent depiction of the act of cutting a throat. Nowadays, we see far more disturbing images in prime-time TV commercials. In fact, recently, while exercising at the gym and glancing over at the TV screen of a nearby treadmill, I caught a segment of one of the many "CSI" shows. In this scene, they showed, in horrifically graphic detail, the corpse of what was once a beautiful young girl. Her face was sunken, pale, and botched, with significant bruising and scarring all about. It was an horrific image of a brutal crime against a human being. And the most disturbing thing is the knowledge that these images are shown every week on numerous shows in numerous fashions.

There was a time, not too long ago, that our society has much less tolerance for so graphic a depiction. In fact, just going back to the 60s, and the release of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", you find a culture that was in strong opposition to the murder taking place in the shower. It was considered completely over the top, and something that simply went too far. Yet in the last 50 years, the line of good taste has all but been erased. And with the advent of "Reality TV", I'm hard pressed to imagine that executions and actual deaths might end up being broadcast for the entertainment of the masses. And of course, to sell cars and beer.

Remember the movie "The Rock"? I do. Vividly. I saw it with some friends one evening, and I was taken on a wild, exhilarating roller-coaster ride of suspense and action. I'd just begun dating somebody at the time who had strongly held religious convictions, and took her to see it a week or two later. After doing so, we had a rather heated discussion/debate in the parking lot about the violence in the movie. She found it greatly disturbing. I didn't think it was any big deal whatsoever. And so the conversation went, with her arguing that the degree of violence portrayed only served to desensitize the audience and our society to violence on the whole. I could not have disagreed more. It was 'just a movie' and nobody "really took the violence at face value". We went back and forth about it for some time, agreed to disagree, and went our separate ways. And only then, with the pressure to defend my position out of the way, did I really start to think through the arguments, the movie, and the concerns about the impact of so many movies and so many deceptions. And damned if she wasn't right. It was not about that one specific film, but about an entire trend, genre, and general "pushing of the envelope" that had been taking place over many years.

The line ahead is the line we crossed so many years ago. We're staring to lap it. It's not healthy, it's not necessary, and it's certainly not "entertainment".

Check All Packages At The Door

2008-03-26T07:31:00.001-07:00

Don't ask me why, because I really have no idea myself, but the other day, this very funny memory came to mind. And with absolutely no reason. I'll relate the story shortly, but for a moment, I want to focus on it's recollection. It came out of nowhere, with no 'trigger' to bring it to the foreground. It was just there. Now, I don't know about you, but when random memories start popping up with absolutely no prompt or point of reference, I start to wonder if the wiring is shorting out. It's as if all the index cards of my memories are neatly filled away in the memory cabinet, alphabetized, cross referenced and color coded for easy retrieval, yet for some reason, this one slipped out and dropped on the floor when I was clear across the room.

It freaks me out a little. I'll be watching for more occurrences, and if they start increasing, i'll bump up the memoirs entries, see an Alzheimer's doctor, and likely find myself writing reminders and notes all over my body, ala "Memento", before I forget them a few minutes later.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah...

The Funny Memory:

When I was in my early 20's, a few friends and I went to a local amusement park, "Great America", where they would routinely setup a makeshift stage in a portion of the park/parking lot for their summer concerts. I don't recall who was performing, probably somebody like "The Greg Khin Band", "Gamma", or some other group that'd likely not sell out anything larger. But it wasn't the band we went for, it was just something to do together for the fun of it.

They had a gate and checkpoint as you entered, at which you'd have to hand over your ticket, and subsequently be subject to a pat-search. Back then, the point of the search was not the removal of your arsenal of weaponry, or the confiscation of your glow-sticks and ecstasy. No, back in my day, alcohol and recording devices were the big taboo, and neither of which was easily snuck past a security checkpoint, due more to their size, then to the savviness of the security staff.

We didn't have either on us, we were just there for the show. So we walked in, handed our tickets over, and headed through the checkpoint. My friend Matt was the first thru, then myself, then another friend behind me.

After Matt got a quick once-over, I stepped into position. The security "guard" was a woman just about my same age, perhaps a few years older. I don't recall her being strikingly beautiful or frighteningly hideous, she was just an average girl in an average outfit doing an average job of looking for hidden beer and tape recorders. So I stood there, arms slightly outstretched, legs shoulder width apart, and tried not to think about feeling tickled. My sides and back were patted, then my calves, then my thighs, them my...

...HELLO!

It all happened in an instant, and before I was able to completely comprehend it, I was shuffling forward to my waiting friend. But it did happen, and there was no mistaking it's being intentional. This was not some casual, accidental finger-nail sized oversight. This was a full on, pre-meditated, firmly applied "nice to meet you" greeting... I almost instinctively turned and coughed. It took several moments of light-headed, head-tilting eye-blinking thought before it all settled in and I realized that I'd just been groped. She brought a whole new meaning to "Search and Seizure".

It was surreal. And I felt so.... dirty.

OK, not really, I actually wanted to go back through the line again. Not that I was so obsessed with the experience that I had to relive it, I just wanted to confirm that it actually did happen.

As I approached my friend who'd already gone through the line, I started to say "you'll never guess what just happened", but as I did, his lips moved in unison with my words. He was saying the same thing to me. We looked at each other, exclaimed "no way!" and turned to see our 3rd friend walking towards us, looking a bit befuddled, and saying "you'll never guess what just.....".

The Impact of Single Minded Multitasking

2008-03-25T00:46:00.001-07:00

My mind is practically incapable of not multitasking on a daily basis. It seems that every thing I do, I do in parallel with something else. I frequently wonder what happened to the joy of doing one thing, completely in the present, and completely immersed. But between the onslaught of technology and the responsibilities that come with a demanding job and the requirements of parenting, things have dramatically changed. Getting lost in a really good book, going for an unplanned hike or just sitting with friends for several hours over dinner and drinks just does not seem to happen any more.

It's not that I can't manifest the opportunity. It's that I can't stop myself from thinking of all the things to do, all the new ideas or projects to tackle, or the projects yet to be completed. I don't sit and watch a movie, I watch a movie, send/read emails or work out my schedule for the days ahead. I don't read books, I listen to them in the car in 20 minute segments on the way to work. And even that's interrupted daily as I use my phone to leave myself messages about things to do, people to contact and actions to take. And don't even get me started about how my iPhone has become such an essential accessory that I've become dependent on it.

I bring this up because I finally read an article from The Atlantic that I've had printed and set aside to read for several months. What a great read. Funny, well written, and laced with insights into our modern culture and the impact of the feverish pace at which we race through it.

The Autumn of the Multitaskers
also appended below for posterity

Screwed Up Washer Makes Me Nuts

2008-03-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

Sunday, you know, is laundry day. Actually, I need to clarify this. In our home, every day is laundry day. Every single day. With twins, it just works out that way. Our washer/dryer gets an above average workout, so much so that every few weeks, the Maytag repair man shows up at our door, asking if they're still running. Sad bastard's a drinker, too, and a heavy one at that. He's got breath that'll singe your nose hairs. But that's another story...

Earlier in the day, my wife mentioned that the washer failed to drain/spin dry the last load, yet moving the dial to another section caused it to kick in. On my turn at the switch, things didn't go so well. After about 10 minutes of various attempts, I could not get the machine to do anything other then agitate. And if there is one thing I need less of in my life, it's agitation.

Ultimately, faced with the unlikely outcome of finding an open laundromat on a Sunday evening at 11pm, I took my wife's advice and attempted to wring out the clothes and see if 4 or 5 dryer cycles would get me through this situation.

As I wrung clothes out into the washer and moved them, item by item, to the dryer, I glanced at something that gave me an immediate idea at what might be the cause. As soon as I saw it, I remembered that washing machines have mechanism that stop certain activities if the lid is opened, typically the spinning cycle used when water is draining. The exact activities that were not working here, when the top was closed.

And how does the machine know it's closed? The switch on the side that's depressed when the lid comes down.

I grabbed a long machine screw within immediate reach, depressed the switch, and the machine kicked into gear. I closed the lid, and it did not. A minute or two of cleaning and adjusting, and we were back in business. It was just some gunk in the switch.

I love things like this. I love the puzzle solving, fixing something myself, not having to pay somebody else to come over and do it for me, and not having to lug a dripping basket of water soaked clothing on a fruitless search for an all night laundromat.

An Open Apology To

2008-03-23T17:00:00.001-07:00

I've just had a rather interesting talk with my wife, who sides with BL's observation and comment on my "It was worse" wording in the prior post. We talked at length about how "zealous" my own position and comments can be as well. And I've had a couple of other "like-natured" chats with other friends and family over the course of the past few weeks. This all has me reflecting on a couple of points, namely being what I'm doing this website for in the first place, and the other being the toes I've stepped on recently as well as over the course (or should that be "coarse") of my life. I'll address the latter here and the former in a separate post.

Now, I'm not saying I've plowed through this life time with no regard for anybody along the way. Far from that. But when I look back, or just "around", there are plenty of things I should apologize for. there are people my words or actions have offended. There has been work I've knowingly done half-assed out of lack of commitment or interest. There have been occasional and unintentional incidents of neglect, disrespect, or perhaps a general lack of consideration. In most cases, the opportunity to extend the gesture of an apology has long passed, and in others, the opportunity is still within my grasp. So I'll start here with an open apology to, well, to everybody.

I'm over 40. I've had plenty of time to step on lots of toes, and to offend many people through the years. Some of these offenses were simply the product of youth, such as making an off-color joke without considering how it might be taken. Other youthful omissions of consideration were more selfish, and a few bad decisions haunt me to this very day. There are many situations that come to mind.

I don't believe that I've ever intentionally set out to cause any harm to another, but I have made choices and taken actions that ultimately have done so. In some cases, there's little I can do besides say I'm sorry that things went that way, and in other cases, were I able to have a do-over, I'd change things around and not have the same outcome. In some cases I take full responsibility, in others, not so much. But I ultimately do recognize that the end results might have been different had I managed things better, communicated more clearly, or just chosen my words with more consideration.

So, for anybody out there that remembers me making a callous joke, offensive statement, not returning a phone call, failing to follow through on a promised action, or any other situation that left them feeling offended or slighted. I apologize.

I'll write more about my revisiting the point of this website another time.

Neck Hairs Bristle

2008-03-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a little update on our situation with the two pit-bulls at the end of our street. And yes, just when you thought it could not get any more disturbing, it does. After getting the kids into the car this morning, while driving down the street, my cell phone rang. It was animal control. They'd been out to discuss the situation with the dog owner at the rental property and they had some information to share. Information that only confirmed my gut suspicions (read: fears).

When they arrived at his house and discussed the situation with the occupant, they got his personal information and advised him of that complaints had been filed regarding the presence of the dogs on neighboring streets. The owner said he would definitely keep them on a leash and inside the house, and also alluded to the same "waiting for money for a fence" excuse they gave my sister-in-law.

Here's where it gets interesting, and telling, about the degree of respect and consideration the owner of the dogs appears to have for the responsibility that comes with owning such an animal. When the animal control representative returned to the office and cross-checked the owner's name against their files, guess what? That's right, Zeek's got a record. A history of issues with these dogs going all the way back to 2003. A record of "numerous" complaints ranging from aggressive acts towards other animals and people to an outright biting of somebody that came to the front door of one of their prior residence in 2003. (And to be clear, when i pressed and asked how many reports, the animal control agent said, with an irony laced chuckle that conveyed the visual of widening eyes rolling upwards... "numerous".)

The agent conveyed that this individual has been repeatedly contacted and warned about containing the dogs. And that each time, they respond with having every intention of doing so. But they do not. The agent made it very clear that she was not expecting this situation to be any different, and that at the first siting of those dogs off the property, we should contact them directly. And take photos if at all possible.

Now if that's not enough to make your hair bristle; try this out: IF they are found outside of the property the animal control agency will escalate the issue to the Los Gatos police, who in turn may take further actions. Or may not. And this is where the gut-punch comes. Ultimately, much like a harassment case where repeated threats of assault or even murder are met with hand smacking and finger shaking, we remain with little or no recourse or resolution in this matter. Perhaps the town police department will see the repeat offenses and fine them, but from the way it sounds, until the dogs actually do attack, there's little they can do beyond that.

My hope remains in our effort to contact the landlord, and hopefully get him on our side.