Monthly Archives: April 2010

Hedging toward the forbidden

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Of course, being somewhat educable, i try to learn shit. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes it even sticks.

In other words, given past experience, I try not to write about work. And with that, you know I’m going to skate near that particularly rice paper thin ice.

Mostly, I like my job, and I haven’t felt the wrist-slitting perturbations that became daily episodes in my last state of employ. It’s a weird little group of people. A collective building heaped from the chief on down with folks who academically achieved even when it meant ass kicking and wedgies.

A nerd’s paradise in some respects. But, it is fucking work, and trials and tribulations there are.

The other day, I was driving there, before my getting old V-dub decided it didn’t want to drive, and listening to the radio. Specifically, I was listening to that solid, quirky voice of public radio, Terry Gross on Fresh Air. She was chatting away with Stephen Sondheim on the occasion of his living 80 years on earth.

Total aside, I love Sondheim in terms of his work, but after listening to this interview I think he must be a dick if you were ever to hang out with him Very old school marm-ish corrections and stuff. I kind of wanted Terry to take a shot back, like “Yes, so what are you are saying is you find other people, such as me, to be plodding and inaccurate clowns, is that correct?”

One thing he talked about has stuck with me for days now. In talking about working with Leonard Bernstein in the early days of his career, he mentioned that Bernstein always failed grandly. He said he learned from him that “the worst thing you can do is fall off a low rung.”.

If you’re going to fail, fail big. Might as well get to the top rung first.

I think it’s a life philosophy into which I could swan dive and feel at home.

Arguably, in the many employment failures I’ve had, I’ve failed big. Mind you not Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein big. Just big enough for little old me.

Maybe to them, it would be bottom rung junk. But, for me, it’s from the perspective of a micro-millimeter long ant and a conventional-sized ladder. For an ant, I’ve dropped some dizzying distances from what felt like a pretty good rung of achievement.

Sondheim talking about failing big struck me this week, because I’ve been feeling a familiar fear and loathing.

Like in my last gig, I’ve been a reliable workhouse. The higher up types have given me sufficient strokes to make me feel like there’s a corporate future in which I just might feature in some way. And, now, word on the street is that we might be reorganizing.

It’s a road so familiar, I still got the dust on my shoes to prove it. The strokes, the good positioning, the reliableness, the work ethic, the dealing with team dynamics, the helpong to make change happen and reorganizations possible. I have seen this movie before. I’ve lived the scenes, memorized a whole lot of dialog.

Yet, it is different. I gotta hope it’s different. Different folks, different gig, different job, hell, different fucking state. And, maybe, just maybe, I learned something last time at the rodeo, and I’m a little different too.

If not, if my pit of the stomach fears come true. It’s a higher rung and potentially a better failure. I just fucking hope it’s a good story, if the road turns down that same hill.

Very little of interest

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No one should really care but me, but I’ve spent the past week moving this website from one hosting site to another. So while no words have appeared in this space, I have been working on the behind the scenes of this weblog.

By way of review, my website was hosted on Bluehost.com, because eons ago WordPress.org, the software on which this page runs, had a promo partnership. It seemed like a good buy, and they were the scrappy new comers in webhosting.

Now, they have grown into suckitude. Once upon a time, if they did an upgrade or wanted you to reset something, the email would be friendly and clear. The other day, they sent one telling me to update my spam protection, and, boom, I deleted a bunch of email that may or may not have been spam based on their instructions. Thanks guys.

When I called the tech line, they offered nothing. Even their “sorry” wasn’t forthcoming, as they went through the steps to determine it was all my fault. There was barely any acknowledgement that their own email lacked pretty crucial information – before doing as we ask make sure everything is all cleaned up over at Postini, because as soon as you do like we’re telling you, you’ll never see that data again.

I think that is what was so frustrating. They turned off my Postini account before I could go through it. Presumably, there my data still sits somewhere in Postini’s servers, unaccessible to only me. I can’t imagine that canceling a subscription equals – POOF! instant data gone.

An email to their founder, Matt Heaton,who implies in his blog that he’s happy to hear from customers, is to date unanswered.

Since my website subscription with Bluehost had only just automatically resumed, I looked around. One thing I found was that I was not alone in my lack of being happy or impressed with their customer service.

The other thing I found, which falls under the allegedly category, and I’m not sure whether it’s fact or bigotry, is that Matt and/or Bluehost may have written some checks in support of California’s Prop. 8, banning gay marriage. He is a Mormon, and the company is based in Utah.

It could just be anti-Mormon rhetoric making the Prop. 8-Heaton connection. Or, it could be true, in which case I’m perfectly happy not giving more dollars out of state that comes back to fuck up my laws.

The only thing people might notice with this change is I’ve added a basic home page at http://dee-rob.com and a new face to my photo gallery.

Other than that, it reminded me that working on websites is a little bit of dorky fun. So, there may be other changes afoot.

Oh, and I’m finally sorting out how to use WordPress.org’s iPad app, so maybe I’ll write more. Pictures like these, look amazing on Apple’s new toy.

The undisciplined life

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M. has learned martial arts. I have not. In point of fact, it’s not even a realm of activity in which I have ever considered participating. The fighting arts lie somewhere between spelunking and coloratura soprano in my world, which is nowhere.

Until I met M. I hadn’t realized that there’s a whole lot of worlds in the world of martial arts. How the breakdown translates in my head (and i’m sure I’m missing an esoteric nite or nuance about which M. will correct me) is that there’s your spiritual, intense, disciplined, quasi-religious stuff and then there’s fighting. Except that’s not right, because it’s all fighting.

It could be that it really breaks down as hypocrisy versus honesty.

The above is a long-winded introduction to the adventure of M. signing us up to check out a class in kendo, the way of the sword, the modern Japanese art of stick fighting. We watched as three sensei (senseis?) and some veteran warriors led various levels of students through drills, rituals, some fighting and a lot of bowing.

My favorite part of the evening was imagining what brought everyone to that gym. Like the overweight, bald white guy with the scruffy, but intentional, goatee and the other white guy with the modified prince valiant hair in a shiny silver flow and fashion glasses. Each of them threw themselves with concentration into the repetitive exercises. Each of them looked like a greater than 100 percent chance that they participate in some kind of sub-cultural activity or lifestyle. Ren faire maybe or “live action role playing” or maybe just bondage and discipline.

One squirmy little guy, maybe 8 or 9, looked like there were a dozen places he would rather be doing a dozen other things. Drill after drill involved slipping feet across the gym floor in a controlled glide. He snuck in extra skips with random hops whenever the senseis weren’t looking and often when they were. He had a drummer inside his head that was playing his own song, and his wooden sword waggled in it’s own, non-warrior orbit.

The backstory for him in my head was that given his apparent mixed heritage, someone in the family decided maybe he could get some much needed discipline while basking in his Japanese history.

He was in marked contrast to the other little boy in line with him for the drills. Lower to the ground, maybe a couple of years younger at an age when a boy starts looking like a boy not a baby, the second little guy was battle ready. Every drill he maintained the dead-eye, stone stare of a warrior. His movements were controlled, precise. I imagine his parents have always wanted a Navy Seal or other Special Ops in the family.

He scared me.

An earnest but not soldier strong blond girl kept looking up at the ceiling to a sensei’s admonishment that there were no ninjas there ready to jump her from above. For her, I think maybe she’s adding some activities to her youthful resume to entice college admission to her well-rounded soul.

We, M. and I, were both drawn to an older gentleman, the aforementioned ninja-evoking sensei. He was Mr. Miyagi in a gym of chest puffed arrogance. To be able to watch, M. had gotten emailed permission from one sensei who was probably about our age, maybe a little older. After a few minutes of watching it was clear that he’s a complete dick.

The old guy, the Mr. Miyagi figure, was different. He had the skills, knew the traditions, the sensei title AND had a fucking sense of humor. He invited us back next week, told me I had a strong kendo build, intimated that women needed stick fighting to keep men in line and wanted us to spontaneously join the exercises.

The dick sensei, on the other hand, snapped at a clear newcomer as he crossed the gym floor that he should say excuse me. I didn’t get it, but think it was just because he had dared walk in the shadow of the great sensei himself. Power trip much?

We spent an hour or two watching exercises to promote muscle memory in the heat of fighting, stick drills, foot work, warm ups, and finally two-person interactions that looked like choreographed smacks to the armor and bashes to the helmeted head. We also watched repeated cycles of bowing and prostration along with identical movements for everything from sitting to wrapping s rag around your head.

It was exactly too formal for our go with the flow selves. I think some martial arts to me would be like AA meetings are to people I know who don’t believe in a higher power. Too much emphasis on bullshit.

I would gladly show respect to the older gentleman full of ninja jokes and samurai sword skills. Bowing to the cranky, testosterone laden sensei and paying him ritualized homage would get fucking old extremely fast.

The quest for a joint activity moves on, despite my desire for a teacher-sanctioned or encouraged stick beat down for M. by me sooner rather than later.

Writing the modern way

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Early adopters M. and I are, so here I sit with Apple’s latest gewgaw on my lap. I have to say this little thing is something.

Now, me, I’ve gotten all sorts of portable devices over the years. I had Motorola clamshell phones that let you download weak, little Java or Brew applets. Chunky pixels of solitaire games or calculators that required a whole lot of clickity clicking.

The web, I’ve been surfing that thang for years and years. Normal folks don’t remember the magic of pairing an amber screen of text with a zippy 9600 baud modem and discovered words on bulletin board services that were left behind by other explorers. Usenet was a mystical land.

Gopher. I went down some Gopher holes and found treasures of information. I was a member in good standing with Delphi, and that neighborhood of oracles. I had mastered WAIS searches a year or so before I ended up sleeping with a guy responsible for some of the core code.

Yeah, I’m geek girl enough to sleep with a true geek guy. (In those days it also meant a house full of roommates who not only could code, but could gather up the binary files and make “Simpson” episodes and Grateful Dead and Phish bootlegs appear from data strings.)

Hell, I even rocked a Sidekick for long awhile.

But, this, the iPad, it’s not your grandma’s computer. Although, it probably should be.

I think the best thing about it is it doesn’t have much of that computer feeling to it. Not a lot of pesky menus or commands. Just words and pictures that humans might use.

Want a book? Hit the iBooks icon, which looks like a book, et voilà. Want to know what books you have? Tap on the library. Want to buy a new one? Tap on the store. Pretty much the same thing for loading up apps and email accounts and whatnot.

I know for sure if my mother were alive I would buy her one.

Now Pat wasn’t a dumb woman, or particularly fearful of trying something new and different and electronic. Among her computing accomplishments was to not only find on the web a bunch of images of Wyoming when my sister moved there, but to download them and print them up on good photo paper for a collage of framed art. However, AOL and her desktop set up were haunted by various gremlins.

A common call I might get, whilst sitting home alone some quiet evening, was “Help. There’s just a big line or thing on the screen and it won’t go away.” Or, “I click on that thing and it doesn’t make that sound.”

What that generally translated to was an errant mouse drag or two had made a menu bar stretch to half the screen obscuring the menus that could it back under control. Or, maybe in the days of modems, the familiar squeal of the phone line never connected. In later days of cable modems the email window wasn’t crying out “You’ve got mail.”

Hours of our relationship, which ended in one of us dying prematurely, could have been salvaged if Steve Jobs had been inspired sooner and technology had caught up to Pat’s fantasy of how “that damn computer” should have worked.

A lot of people hate the cult of Mac and the messiah that is Jobs. It is in the end a commercial enterprise, and he’s a very wealthy man.

However, I defend him and his products perhaps because of his personal interests and how they are found in his designs. It is the tech company where CEO Jobs stood in front of an image of intersecting street signs – Liberal Arts and Technology. It takes a guy who likes to read books himself to design something a book reader might like.

Mostly, I think computers are designed and made by geeks like me who enjoy clicking around and solving puzzles and don’t mind coded language. For them, and some of the time for me, it’s OK to have to click on and on through a series of Skinner-inspired conditioned responses.

Normal folks, though, and a good percentage of the time myself, don’t want to have to think that hard. In Jobs’ world the computer is a means that should be easy with the hard thinking part reserved for the actual task at hand.

We just want to click on the picture of a book to get there and have the reading be the main event. That the iPad does quite prettily.

Too croupy to write

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Man am I tired. I haven’t written. Haven’t felt like writing. Mostly I just sit and cough. And cough. And cough. And cough.

Apparently, or at least the word on the street from the fine doctor at Kaiser Permanente willing to diagnose me by telephone, the old barking cough that scared many a Victorian mother has never gone away. A virus might get driven underground by good health and good treatment and vaccines. But, then, it can rise again in a whole other host of hosts.

In other words, the croup, which I associate with novels and stories of sickly families and Dickensian tragedy, is currently making a come back in a large way around Northern California. Instead of crying babies under a towel sobbing through a cloud of steam, it’s old folks like me coughing up a lung all night long.

For me, croup is Minnie May not dying and Anne getting to hang out with Diana again, despite having gotten her tanked on currant wine.

Well it used to be that. Now, it’s a pain in the ass cough that kept me up nights with a heaving wheezing chest that now lingers into scratchy annoyance. I’m pretty sure it’s not from my being overfed on potatoes and my bad hygiene, like this old-timey article asserts. Or “protein poisoning.”

Night after night coughing and wheezing is exhausting.

What I have learned most of all, is I better not get anything terminal any time soon. Illness frazzles me. I’ll be saving my pennies for a nice, permanent vacation to Switzerland, if the worst ever happens. In fact, if this coughing doesn’t stop, I might have to off myself soon.

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