Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Moving Day In two senses. I'm helping my friend move into a new apartment today, and I'm moving my blog today. Salon has been awesome. All of you guys who drop by here regularly, or every once in a while, or just once when the "recently updated" list ticks over and never come back (for which I don't blame you one bit), thanks. Now we're off and running, then. I'd love for you to come along, if you're so inclined. The new site is here: www.everybodythinksimworking.com This site won't be updated again, most likely, so if you do bloglines or anything like that you can change your links. Oh, and if you have been kind enough to link to me, would you mind updating those? I'll totally buy you coffee. Now I gotta go stack boxes in my car. 9:15:53 AM    comment []

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Why My Neighbors Are Looney Tunes So, I thought it was odd when my neighbors built a giant fish head out of PVC and insulation tubes, and left it hanging out in their backyard for a few days. I thought it was a little peculiar when they constructed, in a symphony of clanking pipes and giggles, a fairly large party tent (like, ten feet by twenty, easily big enough to park two cars end-to-end). In the dark of night. I'll admit I was a little surprised, when I walked out my back door and saw it there, but at least it explained the clanking pipes. I remember, as I fell asleep that night, thinking: That sounds like the rattle of spraypaint cans. Which, given the bongo solo that had already awakened me once, was less startling than it might have otherwise been at 1:00 AM. And the next morning, the side of the tent was covered with a spraypainted mural; the sort of thing normally only seen on the walls of elementary school playgrounds, with a big smiling sun radiating a rainbow of rays onto a Peaceable Kingdom of smiling creatures. When I saw the mural I just laughed, and took a picture. The tent was gone in a few days. Sometime in the last two weeks, a very tall metal frame appeared where the tent had once been. It looks like a gymnastics rings apparatus; eighteen or twenty feet high, made out of one continuous piece of square steel tube that's about two inches on a side. Up, over, and down, like a triumphal arch built to commemorate an extremely modest accomplishment. On This Hallowed Ground, In 2006, This Lawn Was Mowed At Great Personal Cost, In The Face of Fierce Resistance, And Many Histamines. It also looks like a swingset for monstrously tall children, if you look at it just right. It stayed like that for a few days, just sitting there, with wire ropes attached at the top and pulled tight against stakes in the ground, a tensioned system of steel. Then, a rope appeared, tied off to the top of the structure, looped over and dropped all the way to the ground. Now, here's the thing about that rope: It's not your average rope. It's not twisted hemp or woven nylon, the stuff of industry or seafaring. It's a tightly woven cotton sheath wrapped around a fat cotton core, about an inch and a half thick. It's completely smooth along the entire length. There is only one application for this thing, at least that I know of. It's called a Spanish Web, and it's used in circus acts. This suspicion was confirmed last night as I arrived home, to the sounds of weird new-age music playing from tiny speakers. There were candles and tiki torches set up in a ring about the arch, and the neighbors were practicing an acrobatic lift next to the web, timing it to the music. So. My neighbors are circus performers. How many people can say that? 10:47:53 AM    comment []

Friday, October 06, 2006

3D Glasses Required Look at this. But not too close. That is an acutal BUSINESS DOCUMENT. Professional people, with, you know, professions, and mortages and cars, made it. It is a screenshot of a set of meeting notes from work. Honest to god. It’s kept as a running status document, so each week they meet and everybody’s updates are added in a new color. This, in theory, helps you track the progress of an item as the weeks go by. In practice, it makes you dizzy. You really feel as though you’re about to either fall into the computer screen, or be blown explosively away from it, landing in a technicolor heap against the opposite wall. This document makes me smile. It is so willfully tacky. I have never actually read it, as I fear I will develop some kind of neurological disease, so I hope there’s nothing important in there. Who knows. One of those lines may actually be the part where they talk about firing me. Maybe I don’t even work for the company anymore, and I just don’t know it because I can’t read the meeting notes! Holy crap. I should get some 3D glasses and find out if I still have a job. 11:10:36 AM    comment []

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

I Cannot Be Responsible For My Own Actions Before I Have Coffee, Including That Time Spent Making It Let me pass along some BREAKING NEWS from my kitchen. What? My kitchen doesn’t have breaking news all that often. Give it a break. When was the last time YOUR kitchen had something to share? Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. Okay, so, anyway, for those of you who don’t have stuck-up kitchens that share things ALL THE TIME, here’s something fun from mine. Do you know the little spring-loaded gadget that’s in your coffeemaker? The one that allows you to pull the coffeepot out while coffee is still brewing, BECAUSE THERE IS NO WAY YOU COULD WAIT THREE MORE MINUTES FOR IT TO FINISH? This little device acts as a stopper under the brew basket. That is, it does when it WORKS. Because mine no longer DOES. I know this because this morning, I grabbed the coffeepot and began to fill my Vancouver mug with Kenyan coffee, transfixed by the beautiful cascade from glass pot to ceramic mug. After a few seconds of mystical reverie, I gradually became aware that there were TWO beautiful cascades happening. One was cascading into my mug; the other was gushing urgently onto the warmer, bubbling and hissing and skittering off onto the countertop. And then I had a problem, obviously. Because I had a mug in my left hand, a coffeepot in my right hand, and no more hands. My brain is commanding me to SAVE THE COFFEE, but what the heck am I supposed to do? Stick my head under there and drink it straight out of the machine? I may be stupid sometimes, but I have my dignity. There was a split-second to make a descision. In a split-second, I made mine. I put the coffepot down — threw it, really, but I don’t want to make myself sound too stupid, so we’ll go with “put” — on the stove, which was nearby and convenient, and thrust the half-full mug under the stream. I KNOW, I KNOW, it was the wrong call, but I wasn’t really awake yet, and this seemed the more direct route for the coffee to get into my body. I was being efficient, cutting out the middleman. Middlepot. Whatever. So disaster was temporarily averted, or at least stalled. The mug slowly filled with glorious coffee. And slowly filled with glorious coffee. And it became apparent that the “filling” part was not slowing down, but the mug’s capacity to “fill” was quickly running out. I needed a new mug. Which I keep in a cupboard on the other side of the kitchen, ten feet away. The coffeepot! Except I’d left that on the stove, which was JUST out of reach. So I had a terrifyingly full coffee mug in my left hand, and NOTHING to replace it with, and everything I could think of was to my left anyway; so even if I’d HAD a mug, or a jar, or a pail or vat handy, I would have had to cross my right arm over my left and attempt to get it without turning myself into a pretzel, or turned my back on the whole circus, hoping to reach any vaguely container-like object with my right hand while keeping my left absolutely immobile under the stream. Which, in addition to being a surprisingly long sentence, is really, really hard to do. I tried to reach the coffeepot. I cursed that split-second decision that had left it on the stove. I could not reach the coffeepot. I am eternally grateful that there are no photographs of this moment in my life. And then the mug finished filling, and the coffee started splattering everywhere again. And it’s all fun and games until precious coffee begins to go to waste, you know. I yanked the mug out from under the coffeemaker, dove for the coffeepot (during which excruciating moment a large amount of coffee sloshed over the side of the mug and splashed, hissing, on the warmer), swung it around and jammed it back into its place. The coffee that was pooled on the warmer was suddenly compressed under the glass of the coffeepot; and crackled, sputtered, popped, and then turned into black cement, firmly attaching the coffeepot to its maker. As if on cue, the brewing finished and the coffee calmly stopped pouring out. The friendly burble that announces the arrival of a new pot of coffee went on as if nothing had happened. So, obviously, that little stopper gadget has stopped working. I’ll have to remember not to do that again. And I may have to go back to that Starbucks even sooner than I’d planned. 10:12:00 AM    comment []

Monday, October 02, 2006

The Happiest Woman in All the Land When Starbucks opened their first drive-through store here, I was totally dismissive. And why wouldn't I be? How lazy do you have to be, to not park your car, walk the twenty feet to the counter, and order your drink from a real human being? It's a cup of coffee. It's not dinner. That, I can totally understand rushing, it seems. But coffee is... well, it's like going through a McDonalds drive-through and ordering just a medium Coke. Who does that? Well. I still don't know who does that. But I no longer dismiss the Starbucks drive-through with a snotty glare. In fact I stop by them fairly often, on my way to this or from that. Like yesterday, on my dinner break. I pulled up to the menu, and waited for a moment by the little kiosk that proudly stated "ORDER HERE", underneath a gleaming LCD monitor that displayed warm pictures of mochas and scones. I waited for perhaps five seconds. Then there was a click, and the speaker hidden in the kiosk began broadcasting the sounds of steaming things and grinding things and other sounds of coffee-related industry. That, and the single most energetically cheerful woman ever to walk the earth; who, as it happens, works for Starbucks. Bet you didn't know that. "HitherethanksforchoosingStarbucksHOWAREYOUTODAY?" A bracing blast of female friendliness exploded from the little brown kiosk and rocked my car sideways on its suspension. It was lovely, of course. Extremely welcoming. But holy cow, it was INTENSE. I just stared for a moment, in shock, then got it together. "Uh, I'm good. Thank you." I tried to sound REALLY HAPPY, in a reflexive attempt to match her energy level, which of course was impossible; I was pretty sure I'd just come across as mocking. I was a little afraid of the Most Cheerful Woman in the World, but I didn't want to mock her. So I added, "How are you?" and flinched just a little, anticipating the response. "I am AWESOME, thank you SO MUCH for asking! It's a BEAUTIFUL day. What can I get for you?" This blew my hair back and shattered the passenger side window with joy. "Just a grande coffee, please." "Great! Any cream or sugar in that for you today, sir?" Do you remember that old ad for I forget what, the black-and-white shot of the guy sitting in a big gigantic chair with a big gigantic speaker in front of him, and everything in his room was caught in a frozen in the act of getting blown away by the sound? The guy's hair was blowing back, his tie was whipping over his shoulder, the glass of water was falling over, and I think there was a cat flying through the air, unless I'm making that part up. That was me, in my car. Oh, wait. She asked me a question. "No, thanks. Just black." "WOW, okay then! You got it! Anything else for you today?" "No, that's it!" Now I was getting into it. She was obviously impressed by my choice of black coffee. And why not? It's a strong choice. I am a strong man. "All right, sir, that will be one-seventy, just roll on up to the window and we'll take care of you! Thank you SO MUCH for stopping by!" And the little speaker clicked off, and the chipperest girl in the world vanished. Now I was really curious to see what she looked like. Hillary Duff, I thought. She looks like Hillary Duff. Or maybe Lindsay Lohan. I pulled forward, all full of joy and excitement and self-confidence and curiosity to see which pop teen princess she most resembled. My car turned the corner, pulled up to the window, and slowed to a stop. I turned toward the drive-through window, which was, of course, tinted, and virtually opaque in the late afternoon sun. I sat there, idling. The drive-through window reflected mostly me, and the top of my car, and the building opposite; but you could see faint shadows hurrying about, somewhere deep in the coffee shop, steaming things furiously. The window popped open abruptly. And the chipperest woman in the world looked like... a tall black man. I blinked. Never before has Hillary Duff changed so quickly into Ving Rhames. "Hello, sir, that will be a dollar seventy." He had a deeply sonorous baritone. I handed him two dollars, and he instantly reappeared with change and the coffee. "Have a nice day," he intoned, and the window slid closed. This is kind of a fun game. I think I will go to that Starbucks drive-through a lot more often. 12:38:31 PM    comment []

Friday, September 29, 2006

The Dog Ate My Homework! And I Don't Even Have a Dog! Or Homework! All right, seriously now. This is getting ridiculous. But this last time wasn't my fault! I promise! You know it's true because I used two exclamation points right next to each other. You can't do that unless something's REALLY, REALLY TRUE. Or, of course, advertising. This time, with a bunch of stories to tell, my hard drive decided it had had enough of life in this world. It began making a noise that sounds sort of like a clutch grinding, very slowly, while travelling up a hill. The blue screen of death appeared, and the computer shut itself down; and then it just sat there, defiantly "off". I could turn it on, and it would pretty quickly turn itself back off, out of some sense of self-preservation I suppose. And then the hard truth that all of us on Radio Userland blogs must face at one time or another: This stuff is saved locally, on my hard drive. It is mine to preserve, or destroy, or to be wiped out by acts of fate like a hard drive crash. Therefore, my blog... was gone, for all practical purposes. You can't post to it. You can look at your blog, on the internet, and wave your arms at it, and shout "I'm here! I'm here! I JUST CAN'T POST ANYTHING! And yes, I appreciate the irony of having just posted a big thing about how I'm going to post more often!" Data recovery on a single hard drive can be done for anywhere between $300 and $1,000; mine was looking like one of the more expensive breed, being a hardware failure. Have you ever seen a hard drive? Like, the actual drive, removed from its outer casing? They're pretty much solid blocks of soldered electronics. It's not like you just unscrew the old motor and screw in a new one; there are clean rooms, and de-soldering components, and it's all really difficult and expensive... and something of a gamble, as you're not guaranteed to recover anything at all. And given that I would have to choose between paying rent for the month of October and possibly having a restored hard drive, I choose rent. Which means that I have no blog, and no computer, either. Something of a challenge, that. Enter my friend Brendan, who is, as we speak, in Africa. Brendan is travelling the world for a year, because he wants to.  I am unaccountably jealous of Brendan, and not just because he bought a titanium spork in preparation for his travels.  But just before he left, the DAY before he left -- for AFRICA -- he dropped by work and handed me a hard drive, which he happened to have sitting around. Something he'd upgraded earlier, for a better/faster/bigger one, and just never got rid of it. So now it's in my laptop, and things are slowly returning to normal, although I've lost a ton of stuff in the process. All the writing I've done for the last six or seven years, all the drafting and CAD work and design stuff. Tax form backups, things like that. Thanks to Lawrence at Userland, who I suspect has had to do this a time or two, we've got everything back. Except, obviously, for the blog theme, which is nice and old-school. Takes me back, it does. And thus ends what is possibly the driest, most techno-geek centered post I've ever posted, and hopefully ever WILL post. But thanks for hanging out. If I can keep my hard drive from crashing, we might just be okay. Oh. And just between you and me? We'll be picking this up and moving it soon. Somewhere out there, in the universe of the world wide web, there's a site under construction that will take over when this one expires, in about a month. Bet you can't guess the URL. 10:31:58 AM    comment []

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

And What's Your Excuse This Time? A small group of people, perhaps four or five -- though it's difficult to tell exactly how many, as they jostle for position -- cluster around what seems to be a hole in the ground. "What's he doing down there?" a woman asks. Nobody says anything for a moment, then a man tentatively offers this: "I think he's sleeping. Try poking him with something." This elicits a brief flurry of activity, as a pole or stick long enough to reach down to the prone figure is sought. "I can't find anything," says the man whose idea all of this was in the first place. "Well, except for this chair. We could drop a chair on him. Gently." "You can't gently drop a chair on someone," pouts a little girl, sitting at the edge of the hole and peering down. "That's dumb." "Well, do you have any better ideas?" "HEY MISTER!" shouts the little girl, as loud as she can; which, truth be told, isn't all that loud. "ARE YOU SLEEPING? OR ARE YOU DEAD?" Everyone seems impressed with this new tactic, although privately the little girl realizes that her second question would be difficult to answer, in some circumstances. The figure at the bottom of the hole, which seems to be male, doesn't respond. In fact, he doesn't move at all, and hasn't moved at all in quite some time. The little girl reasons that if he were actually alive, he would vigorously defend his state of not being dead, so as to avoid any confusion. But he vigorously defends nothing. In fact, he isn't doing anything vigorous at all, except remaining completely still. Having reviewed the evidence thus presented, the little girl makes her determination: "He's dead," she declares. "You can totally tell." An indulgent chuckle sweeps through the assembled group. Ah, kids, they think, and then suddenly wonder if she might not be right after all. Kids are known for being prescient, and this guy does show most of the signs. The correct answer, as everyone knows, is usually the simplest and most obvious. "She's right," says another woman, who until now has been silent. "There's really no question. This man is dead." Now a murmur of assent sweeps the other way through the group, like a ripple bouncing off the edge of a pond. The little girl's eyes widen, as she realizes she's looking at an honest-to-God dead man. She's never seen one before. She holds her breath and tries to be dead, too. "I still say we should poke him with a stick," says the man. "What for?" asks the first woman. "He's dead! You don't go poking dead people with sticks. It's disrespectful." "Yes, dear." Apparently these two know each other. The ripple which began its journey as bemusement, and reflected back as agreement, now reflects again as something too indeterminate to identify. It diffuses and dissappears, leaving the group in silence, looking at the hole. The little girl gives up trying to be dead, and lets her breath out with a woosh, her cheeks deflating and posture sagging. The dead guy is boring. She picks up a pebble, lying at the edge of the hole, and chucks it at the dead guy, beaning him on the head. "OW!" Says the dead guy. "Cut that out!" Immediately, a lot of opinions are revised, and everybody quickly distances themselves from the initial diagnosis of not being alive. "I never believed he was dead," points out the woman who said there was really no question about his being dead. "I was just trying to reinforce the child's self-esteem. You can't do that too often, you know. Personally, if anyone had actually asked me what I thought, I thought he was filled with life, and really incredibly virile, and I was about to ask him if he was single. If only I had been able to get him to speak, I'm sure we could have had a wonderful future together." "Whose child is this, anyway?" asks the other woman. "Obviously her parents have brought her up without a proper respect for the miracle of life." The man is seized with a realization, and brightens suddenly. "NOW can I poke him with a stick?" he asks. Meanwhile, down in the hole, the formerly dead man is slowly getting to his feet and peering up at the crowd above. Two women, a man, and a little girl. Which, admittedly, is only a 'crowd' in the loosest sense of the word; it's really more like a coincidence of proximity. The first woman is standing a bit to the side, and appears to be winking at him suggestively. The other woman stands next to the man, and all of them stand apart from the little girl, who is sitting at the edge of the hole with her feet dangling over. The girl has a look of shock on her face, not knowing quite what to make of this new turn of events. She considers the matter carefully, and then slowly raises her hand and points at the man. "He threw the rock, I saw him." "I never threw a rock! I did NOT!" The little girl crosses her arms defiantly and looks back down at the guy who wasn't dead. "What are you doing down in that dumb hole anyway," she says in a withering tone. "Nobody hangs out in holes." The guy had to admit she had a point, so he did. "I have to admit, you have a point. I never intended to be stuck in a hole. It just sort of happened. One day I was sitting there, and then what with work, and being tired, and not feeling like typing a lot, I just stopped typing. And calling, and writing, and everything else. And then this hole was here, and I was down at the bottom of it." "So, it's symbolic, then, this hole." The little girl was sharp. "Yes, purely psychological. The problem is, I have no idea how to get out of it." "Hey, wait," says the man, who has by now given up all hope of ever poking anything with a stick. "If that hole is a creaky old literary device, then what are we?" "Oh, you're devices too," the formerly dead guy assures him. "You're here so I can bounce thoughts off you, so this isn't purely a monologue, which isn't really very interesting." "Who says this is interesting?" "Well, okay. It's more interesting. Not saying it's going to be everyone's cup of tea. Can we stop being all postmodern and self-referential now? That is SO trendy." "Fine, sorry." "So. The question remains. How do I get out of this hole?" "Well," says the little girl, in that hesitant tone of voice which suggests that her idea may be SO obvious that it's impossible, and she just hasn't worked out why yet, "you could use that ladder." "That ladder." "Yes, that one right there." "Was that there before?" "Yes." "Huh." "And maybe write more," says the little girl. "Yeah, that would be good, wouldn't it?" "Well, I'm not saying I'd read it. Frankly, a lot of your stuff is kind of out there. But you wouldn't be in that hole anymore, and that's something." "Well, okay. I just climb out of the hole myself, then. Should have thought of that before." He looks up at the rim of the hole, at the faces looking down at him, at the ladder. The guy who had till now been dead stretches slowly; each vertebrae cracking in order, like a roll call, like waking up after a long sleep. He takes a deep breath, and lets it out. He climbs the ladder. 1:48:25 PM    comment []