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

For this week’s Poker Night, we decided to give poker a rest and try a different diversion: Burn Rate, the “Game of Dot-Com Failure”. The idea is to dump bad employees and bad ideas on your opponents while keeping your company’s burn rate as low as possible. The last person to run completely out of money wins.

The game started promising enough. Justin got saddled with a horrendous Bad Idea (instant product delivery by bicycle) that he just couldn’t manage to get rid of. He tried to mitigate the problem by building up his engineering department, but it was too little, too late. Page, true to form as an employee of the City of San Jose, built an enormous multi-layered organization and gave them very little to do. He also bled away fairly quickly.

That left me and Jason. I had a good start by poaching some top VPs early on, but my quick lead made me a target, and unfortunately I neglected my Sales department. That made me vulnerable to numerous Bad Ideas, and I was forced to hire numerous contractors, quickly depleting my cash reserves. Meanwhile, Jay was running a lean operation, and he slowly ate away at my talent. My Development VP got replaced by a complete incompetent, and I was unable to release any of my products.

For a while I stayed afloat with some amazing funding courtesy of my brilliant Finance VP, but eventually I lost him too. Things were looking grim, but I managed to fire my incompetent Development VP and beat up Jay with a few moves of my own. It was down to the wire. But lucky Jay — in a last-ditch effort, he managed to lay off all his non-essential personnel. I went out of business the next turn, and Jay survived with a mere $1 million in the bank.

So I guess I’m not the best dot-com CEO. That’s OK. I’m not the best member of the Planning Commission either, as our forays into Downtown have proven. Lord help me if Jan and Justin flesh out their idea for their even more true-to-life game: Staff Meeting: The Game of Meetings. Actually, Lord help us all.

Well, my sister and brother-in-law are back from Israel… for at least a year, possibly more. They’re staying in LA for now, poor dears, but it looks like it can’t be helped. However, Elana came up to visit us this weekend, and next weekend she and Adiv are both coming up here, along with my uncle, aunt, and one cousin. According to my mom’s email on the subject, it’s an official “clan gathering”. Aye, a clan gathering! We will feast and dance, sing songs of old Goers long dead, and tell tales of the days of yore!

As for Elana, she seems a bit disoriented being in the USA. She says she was at the grocery store the other day, and it was a very strange experience. The store was clean and well-lit. There was a huge selection. Nobody bumped her from behind with a cart to make her move faster. When she asked for help finding an item, the store clerk politely walked her to the correct aisle instead of ignoring her or saying something snarky. Freaky, no? Maybe a trip to New York City is in order to remind her that yes, we Americans can provide unpleasant, rude service just like anyone else. We’re number 1! USA! USA!

As for me, my MOTWM class is over for the year. We had a party at Simon’s house, which is a beautiful place in Scotts Valley overlooking… well, the valley. It was a nice party with lots of lovely people. However, I should point out that Simon’s teenage boys made themselves scarce as soon as the bulk of the guests arrived. A stark reminder that I have joined the ranks of the old fuddy-duddies.

At the party, I talked to Judith and her husband (who works on Gravity Probe B!) about languages. To my great shame, I only speak English and about forty words of French. Judith asked me which languages I would want to learn. I told her Spanish or Russian. Russian, because I really want to go to Russia some day, maybe travel there extensively. Spanish, because it is supposed to be fairly easy and there are many people all over the world that speak it. Also, the cute girl who sells the coffee and doughnuts at work is trying to teach me Spanish. She hasn’t gotten much further than teaching me how to order a doughnut politely, and I think she’s getting a bit frustrated with me:

Girl: Como esta?
Me: Ummm, bien. And how are you?
Girl: You haven’t bought a doughnut in a while.
Me: Well, uhhh… today is Wednesday — we have a staff meeting, and they have free doughnuts.
Girl: You’d rather get a free doughnut than buy my doughnuts?
Me: Jeez, you make me feel like I’ve been cheating on you.
Girl (giving me a long, deliberate look): You have been cheating on me.

On second thought, maybe I’ll pass on Spanish. Those hot-blooded Latins might be more trouble than it’s worth.

Dad is off in Europe on business, so Sarah and I took Mom out to dinner for Mother’s Day.

Mom: Thank you very much for buying me dinner.

Me: Well, I can’t exactly have you buy us dinner on Mother’s Day — even if it is a silly holiday that was made up by the greeting-card companies.

Mom: Well, you two sure put a stick in the eye of the greeting-card companies, seeing as neither of you got me a card.

Well, I did revamp the front page of her website today, so hopefully I’m not in too much hot water.

In other news, my Mac is coming along nicely. Most of my files are transferred and converted over, even my emails. Due to numerous hard drive cleansings, I had emails in .pst format (Outlook), .mbx format (Outlook Express 4), and .dbx format (Outlook Express 6). Considering that these Microsoft formats are not even compatible with each other on the PC (let alone compatible with Apple Mail on the Mac) I am surprised it was possible at all. But after hours of scouring the net and filtering out unbelievable quantities of misinformation, I finally figured it out. Maybe I should write down the process for posterity.

Edit, from April 2003: Boy, I wish I had written down the process for posterity.

I’m still getting the hang of Mac — still saying, “Oh, the File menu is at the top of the screen, not the top of the window,” things like that. But overall, I like the user interface quite a bit. I even like “the Dock”, which is a little strip where you can put shortcuts to your programs and files. Some people disagree with me on that one, though. For example, Andrew Orlowski says in The Register:

Like an unloved Liberian-registered container ship full of nuclear waste, the Dock is making its lonely way across the screen, being bounced from port to port. It was at the bottom, now it’s on the left, and hopefully soon it will run out of locations to take its foul cargo and slither out of our consciousness forever; only to live on as a ‘do you remember…?’ tech trivia question, like the DEC Rainbow or Microsoft’s 8-bit MSX games console.

Anyway, now that my PC is growing even more useless (if that can be believed), it is time to break it down for parts. I offered the motherboard and chip “real cheap” to J.C. Flores, but he politely turned me down. Damn. That J.C. was always a sharp one. Well, anyone who wants an overheating, unstable 1.4 GHz Athlon on an Asus A7A with 256MB DDR RAM, let me know. Operators are standing by.

Well, I’m back from the reunion. It was a lot more fun than I had imagined. Attendance was not too shabby: 43 out of about 140 graduating seniors, or around 30%.

Some of the highlights:

• Rooming with Russ
• Seeing Tom Donnelly in action once again, teaching Quantum seminar
• Sanam Lang with Katy, Sonia, Brian C., Steve, Dave, …
• Media Studio
• Brunching with Eric, Susan, Jessica, and Ashley (ok, so they have nothing to do with Mudd…)
• “Cutting class” to go see Spider-Man with Derrick, Dinesh, Brad, Brian G., Beavis, Matt…
• Dave’s cheerful recitation of his job woes in Kansas
• Brian G.’s proposal of marriage to Sherry and/or Holly
• Learning that Hal Van Ryswyk is “Five foot fifteen inches” tall, and that Art Benjamin’s five-year-old daughter “is like, doing closed-form integrals at this point.”
• Beers with April, Seth, Kristine, Kristine’s husband who I cannot possibly remember the name of even though he seemed awfully nice and told several funny jokes… and many others…

The first thing that struck me was that nobody had changed much at all, physically. Same clothes, hair, body shape. Nobody had gotten fat or gone bald. Craig Meyer actually got thinner, Lord knows how.

The second thing that struck me was that everyone had really changed a lot, psychologically. Most of the people I spoke with seemed to be really comfortable in their own skins. The people who used to be painfully shy had learned to speak in public. The people who used to be… well, a bit off the deep end… had learned to harness their manic energy for Good, not Evil.

So I came away feeling really, really happy for everyone. Some people were still on the fast track. Some people were unemployed and loving it. Everyone was very, very cool. Not everyone had found their niche in life yet… but everyone seemed to be OK.

Either that, or anti-psychotics and anti-depressants have come a long way in the last five years.

So my car got rear-ended yesterday. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

I had just exited the freeway, and was waiting to turn right on a busy road. I edged forward to see the oncoming traffic… saw a truck coming… stopped… and whack! I got hit from behind by a lady in an Acura MDX SUV. For such a light impact there was a surprising amount of damage. It turns out the MDX has a nice wedge-shaped grille, set at the perfect height to dent my trunk and ride up on my bumper, tearing it loose.

Well, nobody was hurt, but the poor lady felt just awful about the whole thing. I can certainly sympathize with her, because I did the exact same thing not so long ago. The only difference was that my Sentra just left a scuff mark on my victim’s bumper. (The guy called me back the same day and said, “It’s barely even visible. Forget about it.”)

Anyway, here’s why this whole incident isn’t such a bad thing — for me, anyway. Three years ago, a man rear-ended my car, knocking the bumper loose. We exchanged numbers, and he said, “Look, let’s not get insurance involved. I’ll just pay you directly.” I figured, why not do the guy a favor… why mess up his insurance rates over such a little thing? “Sure,” I said stupidly. I didn’t even bother to collect his policy number just-in-case — how rude and untrusting that would have been of me! You can guess the rest of the story.

So… even though I managed to pop my bumper back in place, it still looks dinged, and I’ve been seething over this for the last three years. Finally, my now thoroughly-trashed bumper will be replaced, although not by the original person. Karma is fickle.

Now if only someone would kindly veer out of their lane and sideswipe me in the front (where, two years ago, someone scraped the hell out of my car in a parking lot and didn’t leave a note). Then we would be back in business.

So I got some spam yesterday from some company offering to “fix my
website”. They informed me that one of my links (to drugfreeamerica.org) was broken, and that
their services could help.

I admit, at first I felt a rush of guilt. I haven’t bothered to install
linklint
on this site yet, and I’m well aware I have broken links. For example,
there’s the broken HTML tutorial. And of course,
I foolishly linked to the San Jose Mercury News and the Washington Post
a few times, and those people let their links rot after a couple of weeks. Jerks.
Forcing me to link to the Chronicle.

Anyway, I had linked to drugfreeamerica.org in my entry about the
anti-terrorist
commercials during the Superbowl (as you might recall, I sided with the
government… sort of). I was stunned. That link is broken? Just two months
later? I was all set to write a scathing little essay all about the clueless
Feds and how they’ll never understand the Internet
and why-oh-why did I ever give them any credence at all… but
it turns out that the drugfreeamerica.org link is working just fine. So there
you have it folks: spam sucks. I’m willing to take a
stand and say it’s not good.

In the legitimate mail department, I received an email from
Brian about the reunion. This is attempt #3 on his part to email all his friends
and say, “You’re going to the reunion! You’re going, right?” (I wonder why
I classify this unwanted mail as “legitimate”?) Well, I think I’m actually going
to go. It’s because of Brad Hyslop. Brad sends this response:

I have a reminder set for about a week ahead of the reunion. If I feel like it, I might crash. I’m sure they won’t mind as long as they get the right tithe. The only event I really care about is telling lies over late night Sanam Long Thai iced tea…

“20 pounds less, really!”

“Even living off of interest, I can still make the mortgage payments on my 3000 square foot San Jose home.”

“He sez, ‘Can’t we just leave Saddam alone?’ and so I sez, ‘Dubya, don’t make me repeat myself.’ “

So now I have to go to the reunion, if only to compete in
the outrageous-lies department. Although, affording a house in San Jose…
that one’s gonna be tough to beat.

I had been having all sorts of problems with my new bookshelves.
First, now that I had enough room to pull all my books out of storage,
I wasn’t sure how to arrange them on the shelf. Alphabetical by author?
By genre? Second, what to do with all those embarrassingly bad books
from my childhood? Display them proudly on the shelf, or hide them in
shame?

The second problem was pretty easy to solve. My cousin Michael suggested
that I keep almost all my books, but get rid of the ones that are
so bad that A) I would never read them again and B) I would never inflict
on a friend, son/daughter, niece/nephew, and so on. So that made it
fairly painless. For example, I still have fond memories of the first six
Dragonlance novels, so they stay. But the “apocryphal” Dragonlance novels
are all right out. Also out are all those crappy Robotech and D&D novels —
except for R.A. Salvatore, who just barely makes the cut. And so on.

The arranging-the-books problem was harder, but fortunately my hand was
forced. I had all my books in piles on the floor for over a week. I think
I was trying to dream up some complicated alpha-by-genre scheme. Anyway,
I was having a small get-together last weekend, and the appointed hour
had nearly arrived. I looked at the books, said, “Screw it”, and slammed
them all up on the shelf.

So now my books are in essentially random order, but if you look at them
it appears as if there are little pockets of order. But this
is false. For example, all Orson Scott Card books are together, except oops!
Xenocide is sitting over by The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
So if you think you can infer where a particular title is, guess again! You’re
probably wrong.

The cover plan is to tell people that my bookshelves are an artistic
statement. They represent the ultimate triumph of chaos over order, the futility of
categorizing human knowledge, and the radical and subversive juxtaposition of
different human ideas (“Rousseau’s Confessions next to Jackson’s
Classical Electrodyamics… how droll!”)

My Turner Prize awaits.

So. A story.

A rather scatterbrained young man is at a party in San Francisco.
He spends much of the evening talking to this really attractive, intelligent,
nice woman. She’s a usability engineer. He’s a web-guy who is forced by the
circumstances of his job to pretend he’s a usability engineer. She is
interested in ancient Western civilization. She has read up on Asperger’s
Syndrome. They have plenty to discuss.

She’s not a SF local, and she mentions she needs some guidance to find Hwy 101.
He says he has the same problem. They both laugh. SF is confusing. They ask around and
get directions for finding the freeway. Still, she sounds a bit hesitant. He promises
her that he understands the directions and that she can follow him out.

So they walk to the parking lot. She has his contact information. There is vague
talk of getting lunch. They say good night, and he gets into his battered Sentra.

He drives out into the parking lot exit. She pulls up behind him. He heads out,
turns left onto the one-way street. Drives a few blocks, stops at a traffic light.
She stops behind him — close enough that he is no longer blinded by her headlights.
All of a sudden, he can see through her windshield in his rear-view mirror.

It’s not her. It’s some forty-year-old guy who has been behind him the whole time.
He has left her back at the parking lot. He has ditched her. Casually stranded her
in an alien city.

It is a long drive home.

On Sunday, I had lunch with an old student of mine, Ryan.
Ryan recently graduated from UCSB, and he is just now starting
up his own graphic design firm,
Gryphin Graphics.
Ryan’s a really nice guy, and he’s got a good head on his
shoulders — I think he’s gonna do great.

Although Ryan is full of energy and enthusiasm, he is starting
to slow down a bit. “I
used to be able to go out dancing and stay out there for
two hours straight,” he said. “Now if I don’t keep in shape,
and eat right, I can only dance for half an hour before I
get winded.” Good Lord, my students are showing signs
of age. I don’t even know what to think about that.

I also have a nice story that I should have mentioned in
yesterday’s entry, but I forgot.
Somehow it got swallowed by the miasma of hatred that bubbled
up when I started up on the Windows 2000 topic. Well, here goes:
early last week, Nancy sent an email out,
asking if we wanted to attend an Jewish Singles Hiking Club
event on Saturday. I responded, “Why go with them? Let’s just
go on a hike on our own.”

Nancy admonished me, saying that it is always good to meet
new people and “expand our circle of social influence” or
some such. At this, I turned very snippy — I gave her my standard
spiel about young Jewish men and women being completely undatable.
But in spite of that, I grudgingly agreed to go. That’s me in
a nutshell — I’ll do what you want eventually, but I’ll make
you regret you ever asked in the first place.

So Saturday morning I arrive at the appointed spot at the
appointed time — and lo and behold, the crowd was almost
entirely composed of senior citizens. The hike, as it were,
would consist of a four-mile, three-hour jaunt across the
Stanford campus. “You look cold, dearie,”
said a nice lady who did not in the least remind me of my late
grandmother Ruth. “Would you like to borrow this sweater?”

I smiled politely and waited for Nancy and
Mike to show up. They got out of the car
about 75 yards away and frantically beckoned me over. “Ummm,”
said Nancy. “So we were thinking, maybe we should go hiking
on our own.”

So we did. We even stole away the one other person under 55,
a nice, quick-thinking young woman named Rita (“Ummm… are
you guys going off on your own? Can I come with you?”)
And we had a great hike up in the foothills, with perfect cool
weather and lots of green foliage. And Rita brought almonds
and raisins.

In any case, the lesson from this experience is clear.
The road of the single person is a dangerous one, full of
pitfalls and traps for the unwary. Woe to ye who dare tread
it. Woe, I say! Whoa.