Signs Mark Needs More Than Two Hours of Sleep A Night
Seattle
Thursday July 31, 2003

• I fed my cats breakfast, dinner, and breakfast again without sleeping in between,
• While waking up in shower could not remember if I washed my hair--may have washed it up to three times,
• Urgent walking . . . in wrong direction,
• Detecting tone of concern and maybe pity in the voice of friends and colleagues, but perhaps this is hallucination,
• Bad link to Scott's Funstructions video (unrelated to lack of sleep, but I fixed it anyway).

Nightmare
Seattle
Tuesday July 29, 2003
For a good month after last year's Burning Man I would wake up every morning (every morning) having been immersed in a dream of the Playa. These were the most beautiful dreams I've ever had. This morning, at about 3:30am, I awoke from my first Playa nightmare. It was one of those very deep dreams in which you can't tell if you're dreaming. I was sweating and a bit freaked out. Echoing through my head were comments a friend had made to me last week: "Burning Man always challenges you, you just can't know what the challenge will be until you get there." My challenges consisted of (1) forgetting my air mattress, (2) forgetting my ticket, (3) anticipating my parents and extended family joining our camp, and (4) having a gouge in my left temple that was sticky with blood and on its way to infection. I was happy to wake up, even if it took another hour to get back to sleep.

Babies Gone Wild!
Seattle
Tuesday July 29, 2003
My in-laws are off to Portland today after what I hope was a great visit for everyone. [Pictures forthcoming] Two rounds of golf were played, the zoo was visited, and Seattle Center--in particular the fountain--were taken by storm. I missed out on the daytime activities but did enjoy feeding everyone, that's one of my favorite gifts to give, and Sunday's dinner produced one of the funniest one-liners I've heard in a longtime. (And on the topic of one liners, am I the only person out there who though Bob Hope was already dead? I'll probably go to hell for that.) Upon discovering that the grilled spot shrimp were each filled with roe, Dia took it upon herself to explain to Camryn (3 and 3/4 years old--don't be short changing her, she won't stand for it) the whole concept of roe and how many think it's a delicacy. Dia ate some and Camryn gamely had a taste, missing not a beat when Auntie Dia asked her "What's it taste like?" "It tastes like little babies." Which really sums it up when you think about it. In related news, we failed to make our dangerous adult house safe as evidenced by the cut 11 month old Brooke received from an exposed flooring nail. Thankfully, I'm fairly certain her parents won't file a lawsuit. Over the past four days I have developed a much better understanding of what it takes to raise kids (not that I know how to do it or anything) and my hats are off to parents, including my own.

Mojito Ice
Seattle
Monday July 28, 2003
I keep threatening to move this blog to a new system which will allow for reader comments. This would allow everyone to enjoy the random commentary that comes my way via email. Trevor wrote to tell me that the Daquiri Ice post resonated with him. Growing up in "dry dry dry Utah" there was just something subversive about ordering ice cream with an alcohol-derived moniker. And he was enthusiastic about the Mojito Ice concept. He doesn't know that I own an ice cream maker, so now the only task is working out a recipe . . . let see . . . some kind of mint-infused (little bits o'mint would stick in your teeth) juice base (lime?), a little rum . . . I think we're most of the way there.

Funstructions
Seattle
Monday July 28, 2003
Scott has whipped up a little movie of Friday's BBQ shot entirely with his digital camera in, what I'm guessing were something like thirty second segments. It's funtastic. In other Scott Macklin news, I've updated the Tribal Journey site with a link to the KUOW radio show he crashed. Scott excels at self-promotion, which is a good thing in my book since he has a worthwhile self to promote (but we all do, don't we?)

Naked and Dangerous
Seattle
Saturday July 26, 2003
The first of two waves of family visits began yesterday and things kicked off with a BBQ that saw a hoard of crafty kids building a Rube Golderberg-like creation that knocked over paint cans, beer cans and anything else put in it's way. Having house guests with very small children has led me to two realizations: (1) I spend a lot of time naked in my house, which I only notice now that some modesty is required, and (2) our house is dangerous place, optimized for adult revelry. (Don't worry for the kids, it's been de-dangered, a bit anyway.)

The New Math
Seattle
Saturday July 26, 2003
I was never very good at math. Andy noted the flaw in my calculations below (an errant multiply by three) and provided this rundown which, I suppose should make me feel better, right?:

If you actually have three one-page to-do lists, then you're using 280.5 square inches -- an 1870% increase, which is nothing to sneeze about. Assuming handwriting efficiency equal to a laser printer (in the absence of experimental data on your actual handwriting efficiency), the truly scary thing is that if it took you a 40-hour work week to accomplish the 3 x 5 to-do, you'd conceivably need 748 hours to accomplish the to-dos on your three 8 1/2 x 11 pages in a single work week, which is 4.45 times the number of hours in a calendar week.

Illusions
Seattle
Thursday July 24, 2003
No matter how busy I get, I still find time to check out Metafilter everyday. Today's visit yielded a bounty of cool optical illusions, which I've harvested from the thread for your viewing pleasure. Take a look at this, this, and this.

Load Balancing
Seattle
Thursday July 24, 2003
I vaguely recall a time in my life when I was bored. I'm trying to imagine what that might feel like, but I'm drawing a blank. There was also a period in my life where a 3X5 index card was big enough to record all the pressing tasks I needed to accomplish. That day has also passed. My life at the moment is being managed off of three lengthy to do lists, each printed on 8 1/2 X 11 paper. During my index card phase (which lasted from roughly 1992 to 1999) I had fifteen square inches of tasks. My careful calculations indicate that 841.5 square inches of tasks. That translates into something like a 5000% increase in tasks over the past four years. While I'm sure there's a flaw in this calculation, it does feel about right. At least I'm not bored.

34 days to go
Seattle
Sunday July 20, 2003
Holy shit. Just over a month--a month jampacked with work deadlines and family visits--to go until we bring the Triple S Spritiual Service Station to the Playa. Yesterday would have been the perfect opportunity to make some headway but with the exception of Trevor's dedicated facade assembly and Lara's continuing sign painting frenzy, it was squandered, or at least "repurposed." I was useless, exhausted, and wiped out by the sun. Signs still must be painted, clothing sewn, wires soldered, lists made, items (EL Wire, resized coveralls, a bike, lumber, costumery, gatorade, SiniMart stock, etc) acquired, and I have no idea how we'll get it all done. Which is a good sign that we will since urgency is a great motivator. I don't at all want to suggest that yesterday was anything other than pleasant, though: Mikell and Mark not only returned from their honeymoon but made us all fresh pineapple salsa, and any afternoon where the soundtrack veers from Human League to Prince to "Convoy" must be considered a success.

Dia Trump
Seattle
Sunday July 20, 2003
While I've been busy making the world safe to watch videos on your mobile phone, Dia has been hard at work doing research, networking, and laying the ground work for her next business venture: real estate. For the past couple of years we've been creating a vision that includes owning assets that generate largely passive income (not a "business" per se that requires you to show up in the morning and put your shingle out). The payoff will be both financial freedom and time freedom--I shudder to think at all the trouble I could cause and the things I could create if I owned my day. This vision has a multi-year horizon--I'm happy as a pig in slops in my job and "my work here is not done." Today a significant step in moving this vision to action occurred as Dia spent most of a gorgeous summer day looking at no less than fifteeen properties for sale. She figures she'll need to view at least 100 in order to find a sufficiently undervalued residence that can generate rental income and cashflow to bootstrap into the next property (and so on and so on). I'm in awe of my wife.

Rome, I Think it Might be Burning
Seattle
Friday July 18, 2003
What the hell is going on in this country? I mean, really. I was going to rant on about Bush's lies, the deepening quagmire in Iraq, the imperial swerve our foreign policy has taken, Pat Robertson's attempt to pray three Supreme Court justices to death, that blossoming federal deficit and wimpering economy and, close to home, Boeing's layoff of 5,000 employees in Washington just weeks after they squeezed massive concessions out of the state legislature, but I think I'd rather focus on happy matters, like repairing my toliet.

One Holer
Seattle
Friday July 18, 2003
Our house is older than any of our living relatives. This means, among other things, that no home repair is as simple as it should be. Our house was built in 1910, at a time when one indoor bathroom was the standard configuration. If you put these two facts together it should be obvious that a toilet on the blink is no laughing matter. After a week (and gallons and gallons of leaking water) trying to rig a fix for the ancient, worn out "flapper" I spent Wednesday night making two trips to Home Depot purchasing two different sets of parts, neither of which worked. Today I ducked out of work early to get to a plumbing store and bought a part that sort of fit. A little work with an Xacto knife and I think we have weathered this home repair storm. My anxiety is amped by the fact that my in-laws visit next week. My father in-law, a dear man, is also a highly acccomplished contractor and so this toilet repair had to happen before he arrived and took notice that his bright son-in-law is generally a failure at home upkeep. I have less than a week to fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom, and I'm hoping he doesn't notice the missing cabinet door in the kitchen . . . which was missing when he visited last year.

A Vow
Seattle
Tuesday July 15, 2003
I hereby promise myself to get at least eight hours sleep at least once a week.

St. Andrew
Seattle
Tuesday July 15, 2003
Whew. I am pleased to report that the chez joygantic network has, it appears, returned to normal. This pleasant state of affairs is owed entirely to the relentless efforts of friend & coworker Andy, a seasoned network engineer. And it is with no small sense of relief that I report that Andy was himself confounded by the odd behavior of the joygantic network equipment. When you get right down to it, we have have no clear hypothesis as to why things stopped working or why things have resumed working. He did confirm that the brand spanking new router I purchased was defective, out of the box, prompting me to rethink my harsh critique of Linksys tech support. . . OK, I've rethunk it and I still think he was a useless idiot. Ahem. (Must endeavor to be more charitable.) Andy was lukewarm to the Saint Andrew designation earlier in the day when the network was not yet working--an erudite soul, he understood the double edge sword of being labelled a saint.

View From My Porch
Seattle
Monday July 14, 2003
I thought about grabbing a camera, but the thing is--and this I find is constant tension--that the act of capturing things on film and the effort required to do so gets in the way of the moment that seemed so worth capturing. And so you'll just have to believe me when I tell you that tonight I witnessed a beautiful sight: a giant mass of clouds in a shape I've never seen before, a giant, ribbed japanese lattern, cruising past my view and losing it's shape as it started to disappear.

Realization
Seattle
Monday July 14, 2003
I'm a high concept kinda guy. I could never follow the advice I received in college, which went like this: "just write your paper and then, after you've said what you're going to say, write the introduction and the conclusion." No. I need to conceptualize a totality, share in the articulation of a vision (details TBD), and then figure out how to make it happen. In grad school I would sometime spend weeks writing the first couple of pages of a paper and then watch the rest pour out of me in a few days. Which brings me to Burning Man 2003. Weeks ago (months ago?) at a Bloody Mary infused brunch, our camp spent most of a Sunday brainstorming concepts, throwing ideas up on a flip chart . . .

[and I just don't have the time right now to finish my thought, though, really, I think it might be a good one].

The Saga Continues
Seattle
Saturday July 12, 2003
No luck with the new wireless router. Why am I able to successfully ping the network on my computer and yet not be able to connect??? I think I have multiple problems here and frustration level rose to new heights after spending more than an hour on the phone with a mumbly, ADD, "senior" tech support person from Lynksys. After the first 45 minutes of failed fixes, I became more surly, and he just seemed to become, well, dumber:

• "There must be something wrong with your computer" "Why do you say that--it seems to me if my computer can connect to the network through a hub, but can't connect through your company's wireless router, then the problem has something to do with the interaction between my computer and your product, no." "Maybe"
• You might have some software that has settings which are creating this problem" "Which software?" "I don't know"
• "You should get technical support from the people who sold you [my company's product]." "I bought it on Amazon, are you really suggesting I get technical support for your company's product from Amazon?" "Yes"
• "Maybe the router's broken, you could get it replaces." "You mean that the Lynksys router I just bought, to replace the one which broke in less than 9 months doesn't work out of the box?" "Well, that's what I'm thinking, but you could get it replaced." "Right. I'll be returning it for a refund and buying one of your competitor's products that comes with better tech support."

Technology Meltdown (Detail)
Seattle
Friday July 11, 2003
I'm feeling a bit like the Job of technology. Instead of boils I am cursed with blinking lights that indicate everything should be working, but it's not. In case my home networking savior if lurking out there, here's what's going on:

• Our three computers were happily connected to our WiFi network (cable to cable modem to access point/router)
• Then the network stopped working even though each computer showed a strong WiFi signal. Rebooting/powering up/down everything didn't help. Resetting the access point didn't fix thing, in fact after the reset, the access point ceased blinking to show connections.
• Plugging the computers in via ethernet (after having to make cables <sigh>) showed the cable modem to be working, but I've been unsuccessful at getting all computers working at once in a wired network.
• I ordered what I thought was an identical access point and had it shipped overnight. It was not identical, but appears to be the real deal, billing itself as a wireless router and showing a network diagram identical to the one I'm trying to restore. I plugged it in and the computers appear to detect it but the connection lights don't blink and nothing connects.
• Attempts to reconnect the computers (one at a time) via ethernet cable have failed.

I am baffled and frustrated and a bit despondent. I didn't mean to become so dependent on wireless broadband access to the global data network. Really. But I am. Unable to pay bills, order critical summer supplies (9 red coveralls, 50 feet of electroluminescent wire, a pair of plane tickets) I feel like an addict, unable to score. Sure, I could dial up. I know that there are children in India starving for 28.8 kbps. I need to pull myself together.

A Tale of Two Evenings
Seattle
Thursday July 10, 2003
I'm not a baseball fan and I (twice) voted against the construction of Safeco Field. But tonight I found myself showing the corporate flag in a "luxury box" (simply designated "private" on the gold ticket) as the Mariners played the Orioles. I saw a bit of the game from way up high, behind home plate. I marvelled at the stupendously high bathroom:patron ration, ate chicken wings, peanuts and celery sticks, had a couple beers and decided I had no need to take the complimnetary $75 corporate branded golf pullover. It was pleasant and I met some interesting folks to have geeky industry talk with. I left before the game was over and I don't know who was winning.

And then I drove to the Baltic Lounge for the Reggie Watts CD release party and plunged into a very different scene. The songs on the CD are good and more accessible than Maktub. Lara and Mitch were filming pickup shots and the club was packed, which only reinforced my dislike of the Baltic Room. Take a spacious, high ceiling room, plop a giant bar in the middle of it and then serve drinks only on one side and you have the perfect recipe for allnight human traffic jams that should make the fire marshall cringe. But it was nice to be there.

I found out later the Mariners lost.

Unexpected Conversations
Seattle
Thursday July 10, 2003
Driving to work today
Man in the car next to me at a stoplight: Hey how do you like that car? What kinda mileage do you get?
Me: I like it a lot. About 37 miles to the gallon.
Man: I was looking at that Toyota, you know, the . . .
Me: Hey, your light turned green.

Driving home from work today
Girl in the car next to me at a stoplight: Mr, what's the name of your car?
Me: Zippy the Wonder Car.

Technology Meltdown
Seattle
Tuesday July 8, 2003
Postings have been slim not only owing to the four day vacation but also to (a) the cascading failure of my laptop, (b) the disappearance of my memory card reader needed to transfer photos off my camera, and (c) a home Internet outage which I believe I've narrowed down to a dying wireless access point. Given the typically rapid way in which I respond to technology problems and minor home repairs, I suspect that this all should be fixed by early September.

Best Action Movie. Ever.
Seattle
Monday July 7, 2003
You should really go see Spellbound. Its run has been extended at the Guild 45th. I would link directly to the list of other places it's playing except that the design of the film's website makes it atrociously unlinkable.

"I'm Surprised We Didn't Get Arrested"
Salt Lake City
Sunday July 6, 2003
It has been a beautiful, affirming, absurd, and pretty much perfect four days of reverly to celebrate the wedding of Mark & Mikelle. There was dancing, swimming, sledding, talking, filming, hugging, eating, a tiny bit of drinking, and humorous third party admonishments about inappropriate behavior. Pictures to come.

Daiquiri Ice
Salt Lake City
Thursday July 3, 2003
It's very hot in Utah, so we went out for ice cream. Going out to an ice cream store, getting tiny tasting spoons of favorite flavors and new concoctions, and then ordering up a cone of frozen, sugary cream is, well, a treat. The time since I last did this would probably be measured in years, which I suppose says something about the way that youthful pleasures can both fade away and be so easily reclaimed. When I was a kid, ice cream was an event. I was partial to the chocolate dipped half and half cones at the Peppertree Frosty, but it's the trips to Baskin Robbins that standout in my mind. My favorite of the 31 flavors was Daiquiri Ice. And at some point I moved away from the ice cream cone onto the more sophisticated (I imagined) freeze. I can recall vague feelings of superiority sweeping over me as I ordered my Daiquiri Ice freeze. "Daiquiri Ice" surely implied an adult palate with its allusion to tropical cocktails and the emphasis on the sharp flavors of lime rather than the sweetness overdose one gets with, say, Jamoca Almond Fudge (another favorite, when I was feeling less urbane). And having your ice cream as a freeze (an icey smootly-like drink for the uninitiated) also suggested to me a certain savvyness. As we entered Baskin Robbins today I was set on replicating this youthful memory only to discover that Daiquiri Ice had been replaced by "Margarita Ice." I was mildly crestfallen and the resulting drink was far too sweet. I guess you can't go home again. The experience did get me thinking that the Baskin Robbins corporation must have a marketing team devoted to pushing the buttons of children who crave feelings of sophistication when they order their ice cream. Daiquiris are so 1970s, margaritas on the other hand reek of the 1990s. I confidently predict that in the next five years or so, Baskin Robbins will be serving up a new tangy yet minty flavor: Mojito Ice.

Not So Limited Liability
Seattle
Tuesday July 1, 2003
Continuing to demonstrate that it has no intention of coming to grips with the fact that its business model is simply doomed, the RIAA recently announced its intent to sue individual P2P file traders. They will hunt people down, turn some folks into "examples," generate lots of money for the lawyers and, ultimately, will still fail in preventing the collapse of their industry. They've said they will hold consumers liable for $150,000 per song, which is the federal statutory limit. Now I've swapped a few files in my day, but frankly haven't had the time or the committment to piracy to really amass much of an MP3 collection, so I'm not concerned I'm on their list. Not so a good friend who has estimated their own liability at [you must now affect a Dr. Evil voice and place your pinky in the corner of your mouth]: one and a half BILLLLLLION dollars. Muuhaha.

Ishy Squishy Update
Seattle
Tuesday July 1, 2003
Back in March, Rob told me of his grand plans for Ishy Squishy Fishy which, at the time was planned as a 3D cartoon staring sea creatures with a 1950s radio drama vibe. Alas, Finding Nemo took some of the wind out of those sails, but I learned yeserday that the Ishy Squishy concept will live on as a puppet show. I suggested marionettes. The coming live action remake of The Thunderbirds (enjoying that retro-chic comeback vibe in it's own right) has me yearning for marrionettes. But no, it'll be puppets . . .