Sunday dinner with the folks, and I saw a clothing catalog on the kitchen counter. Actually, it was a mostly-shoes-with-a-few-handbags catalog. Now the weird part about the catalog wasn’t the fact that the models in the catalog were all deleriously happy. After all, I suppose buying a nice pair of shoes can make one happy, and who am I to call into question the degree and quality of such happiness? Of course, I think most people reserve such expressions of overwhelming joy for truly blessed events, such as the birth of one’s first child or advancing a step on the WarCraft III Ladder. But to each his or her own. Anyway, the really weird part was that despite their ecstasy at being in the same catalog as all these nice shoes, none of the models were actually shown wearing any of them. Nor the handbags, for that matter. I just don’t think I’m ever going to understand Marketing for as long as I live.

This week I’m taking a class on Solaris. It’s a good class for me to take. No, scratch that — it’s a good thing for me to know. I’m not sure about the class itself. First, the labs are not well-commented. For example, the lab will tell you to do something which is guaranteed to fail (like, say, having a non-root user try to add another user). Now this would be fine, except there’s no commentary saying, “Oops! You probably got Error X! That’s because of Y. What can you do to fix it? (Hint: consider Z.)” No, the lab just continues as if everything was hunky-dory. Anyway, this didn’t slow me down too much, but a few of the more brittle members of the class did get a bit flustered. Second, the instructor seems not to have fallen far from the stereotypical disdainful-lazy-sarcastic UNIX sysadmin tree. He’s not exactly like the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons or anything. But he’s a bit snide towards the people in the class who are struggling, and I don’t think that sort of behavior is helping them learn any faster. Well, if he doesn’t shape up soon, I’m going to mark him down on his teacher evaluation. That’ll fix him.

Finally, this weekend I saw an amateur production of Much Ado About Nothing in Sanborne Park near Los Gatos. My lovely and talented sister was assistant stage-managing, and as an added bonus, I ran into three Mudders that I hadn’t seen in years. First there was Erik, who was donut-guy for my dorm freshman year, and who thus had undue influence on me during my formative years. Then there were Rob and Anna, very nice folks. Rob and Anna combined their last names after their marriage, and you know, I’m about 75% convinced that this approach is an entirely logical and fair way to handle the whole last name problem. The only problem in my particular case is that as far as I know, I’m the only young male Goer in the entire world. So when I get married, I probably will be forced to stick with the traditional naming conventions, lest our ancient clan breed itself out of existence entirely. Whew. Try explaining that to a nice young progessive lady. And then throw in the whole diamond story for good measure. I have a feeling they’re not exactly gonna be lining up around the block, you know?

Byron informs me that he is having a ball in Norway. Sailing Viking ships, eating countless bowls of Gr??t, et cetera. Good clean Norwegian fun. He’s also realized after his first trip out that he needs adequate cold and rain gear for sailing in the fjords (gee, you think?) and so he’s bought a full rain suit “just like in ‘The Perfect Storm'”… including the hat. I should point out that suit is white. How did Karen let that happen? I thought this is why one acquires a fiancee in the first place, to prevent fashion disasters such as this.

On the homefront, I’m battling bugs. A spider in the sock drawer. Ants in the bathroom. Why are there ants in the bathroom? It’s totally clean, and there’s nothing for them to eat. But there’s always three or four trooping around the bathroom like they own the place.

Oh, and then there was the moth. Little guy, smaller than my pinky fingernail. Fast bugger, though. I tried smushing him, but he hopped out of the way. Tried again, but once again he was too fast. Finally I hovered close, waited for him to settle, and with one lightning jab, I got him. That’s right, moth! Three and a half billion years of evolution, and who’s on top of the food chain?

Well okay, maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. But you’ve got to savor your victories, you know?

Brian Gee is gone, sadly gone to New York. (He wants to wake up! In a city that never sleeps!) Anyway, he’s busy with his latest project… starting up One Brick New York. Apparently he’s awfully busy…

On Tuesday, August 27, 2002, at 11:26 AM, Brian Gee wrote:

... Did I tell you that we're getting One Brick NYC
up and running?  We've already got 250+ people signed up for our newsletter
here.  It's nuts.  I don't know if we can organize enough events to
accomodate that many people so early on.  We'll see.

-------------------------------------

From: "Evan Goer" 
To: "Brian Gee" 
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 1:32 AM

Well, I saw the announcement for One Brick NY.  I'm not surprised you've
got a lot of people signed up.  San Francisco is a podunk little town
compared to New York.  What is NYC, 10x the size of SF?  More?

Maybe you can treat it like an ultra-hip nightclub that just opened.
Turn people away at the door.  "Sorry, you're not cool enough to clean up
this park."

Evan

-------------------------------------

On Wednesday, August 28, 2002, at 05:38 AM, Brian Gee wrote:

Oh, come on.  We let people like you into our SF events.  So, we gotta
let ANYBODY into our NYC events.

-------------------------------------

From: "Evan Goer" 
To: "Brian Gee" 
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 10:45 AM

You've got it backwards.  SF was so small that you *needed* A-list people
like me to build up the hype and bring in the masses.  I was your River
Phoenix, and see how you've treated me?

Has anyone tried to cook a roast and set the dial to “Broil” instead of “Bake”? Can we get a show of hands?

Just me, I guess.

The interesting thing about the roast is not that it turned into a blackened lump of charcoal, but that it turned into a blackened lump of charcoal shaped something like a giant human heart. It looked like something out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Anyway, my house still smells like burnt meat. I like to think it’s a musky, masculine smell, but really who am I kidding?

And on the same day as the Roast from the Temple of Doom, Eric and I got our butts kicked on Warcraft III twice in a row. Get this: we lost to a couple of guys who built nothing but Chimerae. And we didn’t bother attacking them while they were building up, and we had no air defense. Fer cryin’ out loud. I’m trying to think of an analogous kind of loss in another game. It’s like… I dunno, losing to someone who manages to “Shoot the Moon” in Hearts. But it’s worse than that, because on rare occasions Shooting the Moon can be a pretty good strategy. The Chimera strategy is just plain silly. It only works when you play… well, people like us, I guess.

Well, enough self-flagellation. I need a better self-image. Maybe like this guy’s! Of course pride goeth before the fall…

So last night, we’re playing a poker game called “Bundai”.

Not to get into the rules too deeply, but it basically works like this. At the start of each round, everyone antes to the pot. After dealing cards, you go around the table and say if you’re “in” or “out”. If you’re “in”, everyone else gets a chance to challenge you. If nobody challenges you, you win a “leg”; the first player to win three legs wins the pot. If you do get challenged, the player with the better hand wins the value of the pot from the loser.

Okay, so the thing about Justin is, he wins the pot a lot. Way more than average. And the way he’ll do it is this: out of nowhere, he’ll just go for it. He’ll have no legs, and then he’ll go in three times out of four hands and just win outright. It drives me up the wall, because I know he’s got to be bluffing fairly often… but every time someone challenges, he’s got the cards.

So this time, Justin has two legs, and he goes in. I challenge, and he beats me. He decides to go in the next hand. Okay, I think. He figures I won’t challenge him again. So I challenge again, and he beats me again. The next hand, he goes in for a third time in a row. Now I’m thinking… my hand isn’t great, but shoot, he thinks he has me cowed. He’s just waltzing to the finish line with crappy cards. I can’t let him do that. So I challenge again, and again I lose. Justin then goes in on the fourth hand. I wisely don’t challenge (thus, as it turns out, avoiding Justin’s four aces) and the game ends.

Well, at this point I’m totally psyched out. I don’t think I can play Bundai anymore. I just turn stupid. And by “stupid”, I mean “stupider than usual” in my poker playing. Fortunately, we’re playing nickel poker, so the worst anyone does is lose $10 or so. I recently heard an archived NPR interview with one of the top female poker players in the world, and she explained that the first time she lost $3,000, she cried herself to sleep. The first time she lost $20,000, she couldn’t sleep for a week. But nowadays when she loses $100,000 in a night, she doesn’t let it bother her. All part of a night’s work. (Lest you feel sorry for this lady and her losses, you should know that she sleeps ’till noon, works her own hours, and has built up a two million dollar bankroll over the years.) Anyway, the point is that I guess I shouldn’t feel bad. My vices are cheap.

Well, not quite. But it seems that way.

First, Colleen gave birth to Melia, who I’m going to get to see tomorrow evening. Colleen complains that Melia was fairly big, 8lbs, 5oz… but let’s face it, Colleen is a 5’11” volleyball player, and Daddy is a 6’4″ volleyball player. So it’s not like this is unexpected.

Second, my old college friend Wendy had her first baby, Karen Elise, early Tuesday. The labor took only five hours. You’ve got to hand it to Wendy — she does everything on or ahead of schedule. First she finished her PhD in Geophysics in just a tad over four years, and now this. And, I think we need to award her some bonus points for choosing to give birth on a Tuesday, which allowed proud papa (and poker buddy) Phil to call us all on Tuesday Poker Night to announce the news.

I should point out that of the five poker buddies present, the only one who got to talk to Phil and Wendy was yours truly. I nearly started babbling to her about how wonderful and magical the whole thing was, but I managed to stop myself. This was Wendy, after all. I think she would have reached out and smacked some sense into me through the phone if I had carried on like that.

Come to think of it, that would be an extra phone feature that I bet a lot of people would pay for. But I digress.

Spent the entire day helping poker buddy Jay move. Jay is moving into the apartments off of 101 and Lawrence. You know, those apartments. Apartments for the mistresses of corporate vice presidents, as opposed to regular folk like you and me. Apparently the rental market is bad enough that they’ve decided to let the riff-raff in. [Pre-emptive note to Mom: my usage of the term “mistresses” is not meant to imply that all Silicon Valley corporate vice presidents are male and heterosexual. I just couldn’t think of the male equivalent of “mistress”. Gigolo? Boy-toy?]

Anyway, Jan was there too, along with a couple of Jay’s other friends. (Jay has other friends beyond the poker circle? What the hell??) They were nice guys, though. One of them didn’t even mind when I scratched his Eclipse (while taking out some of Jay’s stuff from my adjacent car). “Don’t worry about it,” Conroy said. “It’s already pretty dinged up.” Now that’s the spirit. Live and let live, I say. It turns out Conroy had introduced Jay to his current girlfriend, and sport that he is, he offered to help me out too. “I know this really nice Korean girl…” he began. I demurred, telling him that I wanted to “marinate in my newfound singlehood” for a while. “What is that crap all about?” shouted Jay and Jan. I don’t know, really. It just kind of slipped out. “Marinate”? Sheesh.

Midway through the move, Jan asked me, “So are you going to put any of this in your journal?” I told him of course not — that there was nothing particularly interesting or funny about this particular move. However, on reflection I did learn a couple of things about moving today. And damnit, if this journal can’t be fun or interesting, it can at least be educational.

Evan’s First Postulate of Moving

A successful move requires N-1 handcarts or dollys, where N is the number of people working on the move.

Evan’s Second Postulate of Moving

The probability of the UHaul breaking down is proportional to the number of people working on the move and inversely proportional to the square of the time remaining before you have to return the vehicle and retrieve your car from the soon-to-be-locked parking lot.

Jay graciously took me out to dinner after we finished the move (everyone else went home to their wives and fiancees). We went to a Thai place on Castro Street. The place was mostly empty, so the proprietor put us at the window seat. Ordinarily I think of the “window seat” people as being the most photogenic couple in the restaurant… and sad to say, I think in this case we were it. Interestingly, midway through the meal a flower salesguy wandered by, caught our attention through the window, and proffered his wares to us. We politely and casually refused. And this in the not-particularly-hip-or-urban environment of downtown Mountain View. You’ve got to love the Bay Area.

I have, or rather, had, leftover pizza in my fridge. Leftover pizza makes me think that things are all right with the world. After all, you never know when those thugs from the Bachelor’s Union (Local 237) are going to kick down my door and do a surprise inspection. “Stained carpets? Check. Mismatched flatware? Check. No vegetables in the vegetable drawer? Check. Hey, waitasecond… no beer in the fridge… no big screen TV… no surround-sound stereo system… Youze got anything you want to explain to us, Mister Goer?”

Anyway, the pizza was from Don Amici’s, recommended by my cousin Michael. Don Amici’s is not bad, but it’s no Stuft Pizza. Ah, Stuft Pizza. I worked there for a couple of years in high school with my old friends Eric and Jason. The best part was that I learned how to throw the pizzas. This was the high-status job, not for rookies. First you bussed. Then you decorated pizzas (added toppings). Then you worked the oven. And then you got to throw. Unless you were a girl, of course. Then you skipped directly to Stage 2 and stayed there. Blatantly sexist, I know. The only exception was the owner’s cousin, Zelia. She was allowed to throw because although she was only four-foot-nine, she had the Strength of the Undead. We had a love-hate relationship, Zelia and I.

Where was I? Pizza-throwing. Now, when you see the old Italian guys in the movies throwing pizzas (usually while singing O Sole Mio or some such), you’re seeing The Basic Throw. Pizza goes up. Pizza spins lazily in the air. Pizza falls. Catch, repeat. Basically, this is the throw for little kids, cripples, invalids, and movie actors dressed to look like old Italian guys. Any pizza thrower worth his or her salt has mastered the continual throw, where you use both hands to rapidly spin the pizza like a turntable. Not only does this look cooler, but it flattens the dough much faster to boot. One you’ve mastered that throw, you work on the one-handed continual throw. After that, the off-hand one-handed continual throw. And after that… the pinnacle of pizzeria puissance, the mighty Double. Two pizzas spinning continuously, one with each hand. I never figured out how to do it. I was able to do both of the continual throws, but never at the same time. A few more months at the pizza place, and I would have had it, I think. Maybe I woulda hit the big time. The Pizza Olympics. Hey, I was just a crazy mixed-up kid with a head full of dreams, you know? But instead I went off to college and studied far less practical things. And that, as they say, was that.

Well, it’s been a while since I made an entry. The reason for this is that I was… on vacation! Yes, I was down in Sunny Southern California for some much-needed and (I might as well be honest) company-enforced R&R. (This year I was prepared for the company’s 4th-of-July week shutdown, and I had wisely saved up enough vacation days. I’m slow, but I do learn.) I had planned to do some journal writing remotely using Eric’s computer, but Eric bought Warcraft III last week, so really who was I kidding? Not that I don’t hunger to just blog, blog, blog during my vacations just like all the other hardcore people out there. (“Hey look everybody! I’m blogging SXSW!!” Feh.)

The other reason it’s been a while is that my ISP has gone from bad to worse. But I’m not going to talk about that. The way I figure it, I could spend this entry ranting about my ISP, or I could talk about my wonderful vacation. Heck, experts predict^* that at the current rate of expansion, rants about ISPs, web hosts, spam, and telephone service will constitute over 50% of Internet traffic by late 2005. So let’s not go there, okay?

Note: qualifications and even physical existence of “experts” subject to liberal interpretation.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

• Monday, July 1: Drove down to Santa Barbara. Crashed at Rachel and Ben’s. Went out to dinner in downtown Santa Barbara and had key lime pie that was not radioactive green. Played pool at Fig & Haley’s and was whipped soundly by both Ben and Rachel. Rachel didn’t even have to make fish faces to distract me like in the old days. Sad really.

  Take home lesson: I’d love to be a fly on the wall when Rachel and Ben start raising kids. “No, honey, you can’t play with those. Those are Mommy’s Warhammer 40K miniatures.”

• Tuesday, July 2: Drove down to LA at a very leisurely pace. Stopped at Carpenteria beach to read Christina Hoff Sommers’s Who Stole Feminism? Tried to convince myself that Sommers is talking about only the most extreme elements of far-left academia, and mostly succeeded. Continued down to Culver City, visited sister Elana, brother-in-law Adiv, Adiv’s mother Judy, Adiv’s sister Julie, and Julie’s sons Toby and Evan. (Would they be my nephews-in-law? Probably not.) Toby, 3 1/2, is energetic. Evan, 1 1/2, is energetic and very drooly. Late in the evening, arrived in Venice Beach and met up with Eric and Susan.

  Take home lesson: Toby decided he needed to distinguish between me and his little brother, dubbing me “Big Giant Huge Evan.” From the mouths of babes…

• Wednesday, July 3: Stayed home most of the day. Warcraft III was released today. Eric made a pretense of going to work, but called in “sick”, even going so far as to call Susan and me and tell us he wasn’t feeling well. Exchanged quizzical look with Susan… does he think he’s kidding us? Spent a couple of hours slaughtering evil ghouls and other undead nasties. Felt suitably righteous. In the evening, visited Jessica with Elana and Adiv. Retrieved my Thinking Physics and my Arfken & Weber Mathematical Methods for Physicists from her keeping, where they had resided for the last two years. Discovered that Jessica’s boyfriend Ashley is only 26. Wondered why he looks five years older than me, and then remembered: he’s a Ph.D physicist.

  Take home lesson: The secret to eternal youth — bail from grad school, the earlier the better.

• Thursday, July 4: All-day barbeque at Eric’s, from 10am to 11pm. Ate all sorts of meats, including real East LA carne asada. Spent a fair amount of time talking to a Swedish au pair who expressed her desire for a green card and mentioned that she really needed to find a nice, rich American man and marry him soon. Wasn’t sure if she was kidding about that last part. Decided to retreat to the safety of the living room to play Boggle. Saw Elana and Adiv, plus Byron and Karen… who are engaged! And flying off to Norway for a year to sail Viking ships. Yes, really. Party was at certain points crawling with gorgeous women, nearly all of whom were friends of one of the guests, a fairly good-looking friendly guy named Jose. (Their refrain: “Where’s Jose?” “Have you guys seen Jose?” “Why yes, I am a friend of Jose’s, how did you know?”) Also saw fireworks on the beach, but these were partially overshone by the ten-year-old boys next to us, who decided to dig a large pit and ignite all their fireworks in it at once.

  Take home lesson: There are a lot of very attractive women in LA. Not to mention Santa Barbara. I’m just sayin’.

• Friday, July 5: Recovered from party. Read in paper that the FBI is unsure about the motives of the LAX gunman. Blinked rapidly in surprise. Briefly discussed the idea of going to law school with young lawyers Eric and Susan. Decided that this idea was pretty half-baked and that Eric and Susan are bad influences on me. Not that this disqualifies the whole thing out-of-hand. Took old college mentor, role model, and personal hero Peter Saeta out to dinner. Saeta & family had just returned from a year’s sabbatical in Paris the day before. Despite his fatigue, oldest son Brennan (11) gamely stayed up late to ask me Macintosh questions. Peter then showed me the Statistical Mechanics textbook he’s writing. He started it in March, and the first draft is almost done. And it’s pretty darn good, from the excerpt I read.

  Take home lesson: Writing a book in a workman-like manner without all the angst and fretting and writer’s block and writer’s groups and blah blah blah seems… I dunno, wrong somehow.

• Saturday, July 6: Read paper. FBI still confused about motives of LAX gunman. Had brunch with Elana and Adiv. Adiv borrowed Thinking Physics — guess I’ll never get that book back home. Adiv strangely uninterested in Arfken & Weber, though. Headed up to Glendale with Eric and Susan to have dinner with Jason and Megan, who I hadn’t seen for about nine years. Jason tracked me down last month through the Internet. (Yay Internet!) They are married and very happy in their new house. Managed to catch them up on nine years of my life in five minutes or so. Figured that must be some sort of record.

  Take home lesson: Carignane is usually used to blend other red wines… but the pure stuff from Ridge Winery is definitely a winner.

• Sunday, July 7:Left early. FBI still confused about motives of LAX gunman. Had a nice brunch with Jeff and Renee in Ventura. Made another leisurely drive up the coast to meet Ryan. Relaxed in some natural hot springs, then went to Taco Roco for some excellent cheap Mexican food. Bid Ryan adieu and continued north. Discovered FM 107.3, which plays “Real Rock”, not to be confused with “New Rock”, “Alternative Rock”, “Modern Rock”, or any other such namby-pamby predecessors. Despite a few unfortunate glitches in the lineup, generally found it to be superior to every rock station in the Bay Area. For example, every night at 8pm they have something called, “Mandatory Metallica”. Now this is an idea whose time has come. Unfortunately 107.3 pizzled out near King City. The next best thing in this NPR-forsaken swath of the state was a station playing Jody Watley. Rest of drive home very depressing.

  Take home lesson: You can never have too much Metallica when driving, or too little Creed under any circumstances.

Looks like I plumb forgot to do a July 2002 entry. Darn.